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l^UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.; 



JOSEPH M'DONOm 
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BONNIE JEAN 



BONNIE JEAN, 

B Collection of papers ano poems relating to 
tbe limife ot 

ROBERT BURNS. 



COMPILED BY 

JOHN D.^OSS, LL. D., 

AUTHOR OF "SCOTTISH POETS IN AMERICA," 
EDITOR OF "HIGHLAND MARY," "ROUND BURNS' GRAV1 
"BURNSIANA," "BURNS' CLARINDA," ETC. 



WITH A PREFACE BY 

PETER ROSS, LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF "THE SCOT IN AMERICA," "a LIFE OF SAINT ANDREW, 
"SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTS," ETC. 



" To her memory peace ! 
With thee she lieth in gray Dumfries ; — 
Hers were thy sorrows, successes, joys ; 
She cuddled thy lassies and reared thy boys ; 
She dropped o'er thy grave her quick hot tears ; 
And gave to thy memory her widow'd years. 

REV. ARTHUR JOHN LOCKHART. 



NEW YORK : 
The Raeburn Book Company, 

1898. 



1 X 



9460 







THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

TO 

WALTER SCOTT, JR., Esq., of New York, 

PAST ROYAL CHIEF OF THE ORDER OF SCOTTISH CLANS : 

A REPRESENTATIVE SCOTTISH-AMERICAN GENTLEMAN, 

AN ENTHUSIASTIC LOVER OF AULD SCOTIA 

AND A WARM ADMIRER OF ROBERT BURNS AND BONNIE JEAN. 



PRESS OF 

WALTER W. REID, 

NEW YORK. 



PREFACE. 



I have been requested to write a preface to this 
volume, this unique tribute to the memory of the 
wife of Robert Burns, and I comply with pleasure. 

So far as I have seen from the proof-sheets, about 
every event in Jean Armour's life has been chroni- 
cled, almost every phase of her character has been 
considered, by the writers 'whose contributions make 
up this interesting book, and so but little remains 
for me to say. Still I cannot forbear using the op- 
portunity offered to me to lay a stone or two on the 
cairn which the world has raised, and is still, perhaps 
unconsciously, raising to the memory of Jean Armour. 
She was not a woman of genius, she never burned 
the midnight oil in search of knowledge, nor did she 
ever wrestle with rhyme, but no one can have 
studied the life of her husband without acknowledg- 
ing that it was after her influence over him became 
supreme, after she was publicly installed as his wife — 
acknowledged mistress of his heart and hand — that 
his song attained its highest flights, its most prolific 
abundance. 



viii PREFACE. 

Early in what is now a study of Burns' life and 
works that has extended over more years than were 
allotted to him who 

— moved in manhood as n youth, 
Pride of his fellow men, 
I formed the idea that the one woman who exerted a 
real and lasting influence on Burns was her whom 
in return he has immortalized as Bonnie Jean. All 
that I have since read has tended to confirm that 
idea and to make it, to me at least, pass from an idea 
into a theory, and from a theory into a fact. I am 
aware, of course, that when people speak of the 
loves of Burns they think on other women than her 
who became his wife. Some turn to the hapless 
Clarinda — one of the most pathetic figures, whatever 
way we regard her, which the whole course of Scot- 
tish literature has given to us ; but he was under her 
influence for only a brief spell — although there is no 
doubt that her heart was his until the end of her 
career. Others, and in fact the great majority, 
turn their thoughts to the cherished figure of High- 
land Mary, surrounded as it is with romance, love, 
pathos and mystery. But in spite of all its poetry, 
its mystery, its depth of romance, and its opportun- 
ities for discussion, we turn from Highland Mary to 
the real heroine of Burns' life, the heroine but for 



PREFACE. ix 

whom Highland Mary would have been no more to 
the poet after the fit passed than was " Handsome 
Nell;" the heroine who so elevated and purified his 
ideas of true womanhood as to make him rise to the 
sublimity of "To Mary in Heaven;" the wife of his 
heart, the fixed star of his affections — Jean Armour. 
Burns became acquainted with Jean soon after set- 
tling in Mossgiel, and the acquaintanceship quickly 
ripened into mutual love. In all the episodes of 
Highland Mary, Clarinda and the others, Burns never 
forgot Jean. He strove to forget her in Edinburgh, 
but could not efface this woman from his heart. 
Amid all the glitter of Auld Reekie, in the high tide 
of his fame, Burns wrote "I feel a miserable blank 
in my heart for the want of her." When he re- 
turned to Ayrshire after the glory of Edinburgh had 
passed, he was once more at her side. His fame 
had preceded him ; he was no longer the ne'er-do- 
well he formerly was and old Armour looked on 
Burns with different eyes. He was now perfectly 
willing for the union between the poet and his 
daughter which he had formerly so bitterly opposed ; 
he even urged it. Burns was so disgusted at the 
servility shown in the change, that he now hung 
back. But this did not last long, and in August, 
1788, Jean and Burns were married, and then set out 



x PREFACE. 

on the journey of life together, in a little, a very lit- 
tle, home at Mauchline. Thanks to her, Burns' 
home life was a happy one. We read of no bicker- 
ings or upbraidings between husband and wife — 
none even of those "tiffs" which are supposed to be 
incidental to the marriage relationship. To him she 
proved a real, loving help mate. She was passively 
blind to all his short-comings. She fully apprecia- 
ted his genius, and understood his temperament 
better than any one else. She with her evident tact 
knew how to remove care from his brow and meet 
his wayward humors with a pretty smile or a cheery 
song. 

As a life partner no one was better suited to get 
along with the whims and shortcomings of the poet. 
She made for him a happy home — as happy as she 
could, and bore up bravely under her sorrows when 
she saw the crisis of her life at hand and the cer- 
tainty of widowhood faced her. She was a true wo- 
man, a good wife, an affectionate mother, and her 
memory deserves to receive more of the praise so 
generously lavished on some of the other loves of 
the poet than it has yet received. 

He immortalized her in many of his songs; he 
wove a laurel wreath around her as beautiful and 
endearing, if not as tragic, as that which he wove 



PREFACE. xi 

around Highland Mary. But there was one differ- 
ence that speaks volumes for Jean's supremacy in his 
heart. While he sang of her she was before him 
with all the faults, frailties and shortcomings of hu- 
manity, all the tedium, as it has been called, of 
ordinary daily life; while the other had passed 
through the veil and so become idealized long before 
the " lingering star " aroused in him such a force of 
agonized thought, and in time impelled the world, as 
a result of his burning words, to elevate the High- 
land lass into one of the heroines of poetry. 

During her married life with Burns, not a whisper 
against Jean's wifely character was raised, and dur- 
ing her long widowhood not even the clatter of 
Dumfries could cast a slur or suggest a hint to her 
detriment. She survived her husband some thirty- 
eight years, dying March 26, 1834. 

Left as she was in a most helpless condition, the 
people of Scotland came to her aid, and soon placed 
her beyond the fear of all want, and later made her, 
from her standpoint, in easy circumstances. She 
seemed to consider from that time that she lived to 
guard the fame of her husband. She refused to 
leave the little abode in which he died. She kept it 
as a show house to such of his admirers as visited 
Dumfries, and devoted herself, heart and soul, to 



xii PREFACE. 

the training of their children. How nobly she suc- 
ceeded is well known. Some were taken from her 
in early life and laid to rest beside their father, but 
she was permitted to see others make their way to 
honorable positions in the world, while as the sunset 
began to fall she found herself the almost sainted 
centre of her children's children. 

She gave of her means liberally in charity. The 
attentions she received, from high and low, never 
affected her native good sense, and her home was a 
picture of content. She showed in the highest de- 
gree that quality of common sense, blended with 
kindness, which has done so much to mould the 
Scottish character, to shape the Scottish National 
life, and if we were to write her epitaph we would 
simply sum up her life virtues and failings with the 
words; "A good and true woman." 

This little volume will doubtless prove acceptable 
to the lovers of Scotia's immortal bard everywhere, 
and be regarded as a companion work to those in 
which the same editor has with loving and discrim- 
inating care gathered together a mine of informa- 
tion regarding Highland Mary and Clarinda. It is 
from such volumes, dealing with special portions of 
the bard's career, or bringing to us a full knowledge 
of those who in one way or other shaped that 



PREFACE. xiii 

career, that we gain many valuable side-lights on 
his own biography, that makes us understand all the 
more clearly the quality of the gift of gifts which 
Scotland received when, in 1859, 

" a blast o' Jan'war' win' 

Blew hansel in on Robin." 

It is hoped this book will meet with a success 
equal to that at least bestowed on its companion 
volumes. I am as ready as any one to render 
homage to the memory of Clarinda, I am ready for 
the sake of the poetry bearing her name to rever- 
ence the heroine we know as Highland Mary. I 
feel all the interest of a Burns student in Allison 
Begbie, and love to follow the fortunes of such good 
and true women as her whose "bonnie e'en" still 
sparkle in the poet's pages, but Clarinda, High- 
land Mary, and all the rest, to an admirer of Burns, 
must yield the foremost place to Bonnie Jean. 

PETER ROSS. 
New York, October, 1897. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Bonnie Jean, by J. M. Murdoch, - - - - i 

Bonnie Jean, by James Gieean, - - - - n 

Bonnie Jean, by Dr. Robert Chambers, - - - 13 

Bonnie Jean, by Robert Burns Begg, - - - 19 

Bonnie Jean, by Hunter MacCueeoch 50 

Bonnie Jean in Edinburgh, by Archibaed Munro, 51 

"Of a' the Airts," by Rev. John Arthur Lock- 
hart, 63 

Burns' Bonnie Jean, by Mrs. Jameson, 67 

Faithfue Jean, by Rev. Arthur John Lockhart, 76 

The Wife of Burns, by Aean Scott, - - - 77 

Bonnie Jean in her Oed Age, 81 

How Hew Ainseie Kissed Jean Armour, by 

Thomas C. Latto, 82 

Mrs. Burns, by Aeean Cunningham, 84 

The Wife of Burns, by John Gibson Lockhart, - 87 

Mrs. Burns' Circumstances After the Poet's 

Death, 9 6 



CONTENTS. xv 

PAGE 

Bonnie Jean, by George Dobie, 98 

Death and Character of Mrs. Burns, 99 

Brave Bonnie Jean, by Hon. Wallace Bruce, - 109 

"Of a' the Airts," by Robert Ford, ... no 

Jean Armour, by Rev. William Lowestofft. - - 115 

To Robert Burns, by Dr. Benjamin F. L,eggett, - 129 

The Poet and his Wife, by Rev. Arthur John 

Lockhart, 130 

The Best Wife for Burns, by George Gebbie, - 153 

Burns's Bonnie Jean, by Angus Ross, - - - 155 

The Home Life of Burns and Jean Armour, - 156 

The Poet's Immortal Wreath for Bonnie Jean, - 164 

A Mauchline Lady. 

The Belles of Mauchline. 

Oh ! Were I on Parnassus' Hill. 

My Jean. 

Of a' the Airts the Wind can blaw. 

It is na, Jean, thy Bonnie Face. 

I ha'e a Wife o' my ain. 

The Winsome Wee Thing. 

This is no my ain Lassie. 

Their Groves of Sweet Myrtle. 

i'll aye ca' in by yon town. 

By Way of Epilogue, by Hon. Charles H. Collins, 173 



BONNIE JEAN. 



By J. M. Murdoch, Ayr, 



AMONGST all the names in Burns' literature, no 
one is so dear to us as "Bonnie Jean." As we 
read the variegated career of the greatest Scotsman 
ever born, we are dazzled by the splendour of his 
versatility, as we are well-nigh moved to tears by 
his frailties, we never for a single moment forget his 
Bonnie Jean. Jean Armour's fame can never per- 
ish. As Burns is borne on the wave of popularity 
his Jean will be near him, and Scotsmen all the wide 
world o'er will stand on the shore and observe the 
two, not with feelings of deep regret and bitter re- 
morse, but with admiration — deep, fervent, and 
sincere. No lifeboat will be necessary to rescue the 
couple from the grave of some other singers and 
heroes; no rockets will be fired to warm admirers of 
impending doom, and no funeral service will be held 
to say a few parting words regarding their trans- 
formation. The printing press has not reached per- 
fection, nor has the fame of Burns and Jean Armour 
reached its maximum. And so long as the printing 
press is in existence, and Scotsmen are what they 
are, so long will Burns and Bonnie Jean survive. 
We are sometimes told by those who, presumably, 
have not studied human nature, that Burns, with 
some cultured, literary lady — say Clarinda — as help- 
meet, would have done better work and more of it ! 
Oh the folly and the indelicacy of these might have 
beens ! Burns had his weaknesses, so have all; but 
had we been placed in his position we should assur- 



2 BONNIE JEAN. 

eclly have walked in the same plane. Let us not be 
too finical in our judgments, and thus emulate the 
hypocrisy of a Mauchline preaching. 

We are not amongst those who incessantly and 
domineeringly cry out that Burns and his Jean were 
neglected, yea despised, while in the flesh. Burns 
was aware of his marvellous, preternatural gifts ; he 
was, with few exceptions, received with the respect 
due to a truly great man ; his poems created a greater 
furore in Scotland than the vapid stuff of the 
majority of present-day writers; and he was, con- 
sidering the literary remuneration of the time, hand- 
somely paid. 

Jean Armour, like many Scotch country lasses, 
was not an adept in judging genius, and she probably 
took to Burns, not on account of his literary gifts, 
but on account of his luring, bewitching, persuasive 
powers in the art of lovemaking. Isn't it curious, 
isn't it a subject for our deepest meditation, how this 
young girl, accustomed to the simplicity of rustic 
life, ignorant of millinery paraphernalia and the 
rules of etiquette — or tomfoolery — of the rich, and 
unread in the classics, was, above all others, the one 
person in the right place, and who, after her marriage, 
was alwas spoken of in terms of the highest praise ? 
But for her meeting with Burns, Jean Armour would 
likely have died unknown ; but as the lover, the wife 
and the widow of our grandest lyric poet, she cannot 
be ignored. 

If Burns is to have a corner in our hearts we must 
also provide a corner for Bonnie Jean. We are in- 
clined to say that Jean Armour did not become 
famous until after her husband's death, and when we 
say so we know we are upon treacherous ground. 
However, such is the case. The genuine admirers 
of the poet, and the prying slothful sofa recliners 



BONNIE JEAN. 3 

generally endeavoured to see Jean as well as Burns, 
but they were so busy in scanning the greater star, 
that the lesser got scant justice. 

Since the 21st July, 1796, a sad, sad day for Scot- 
land and the world, a greater calamity to the world 
than the loss of a British Army in Africa, or the 
sinking of a score of American ironclads, Jean has 
gradually risen to her true position amongst the 
revered ones of the earth, and in 1895, we can say, 
without the fear of contradiction, that her life is a 
pattern to the mothers of the civilized globe. 

Some time ago, an attempt was made to enhance 
[Sic /] the position of Bonnie Jean, but the assump- 
tions and the insinuations were too lifeless to evoke 
the sympathy of the Burns world. A feature of the 
present day is controversies regarding the writings 
of great minds, and whenever writers in the daily or 
weekly press, or speakers on the platform begin to 
consider disputed points, one knows that the book, or 
passage of book, handled is or has been read. This 
remark is specially applicable to the Bible and Burns. 
There are thousands of ambitious young men and 
women yearning for the day when the offspring of 
their brains shall demand a few letters to the editor, 
and a discussion at the literary society. But there 
are contributions and contributions, and many are 
often times out of place. The article to which we 
have already referred was like a dead dog on the 
table of a London or New York drawing-room — 
nauseous, vomit-creating, and altogether distasteful. 
A gentleman, animated by a desire for justice, asked 
''lovers of Burns to rescue noble Jean Armour from 
the obscurity into which she has been relegated by 
believers in an idealized Highland Mary." It is out 
of the question to make Jean Armour stand better 
in our eyes by a few daubs, out of the pot of vilifi- 



4 BONNIE JEAN. 

cation, on the memory of Gavin Hamilton's maid- 
servant. The attachment between Burns and Mary 
Campbell was artistic in its sincerity ; pathetic in its 
shortness; and this is said after allowing a table- 
spoonful of salt for poetic license. Mary Campbell 
is to us what she was to Burns, a true sample of 
rustic virtue and simplicity, and had the fiat of Al- 
mighty God been sooner directed against Jean 
Armour than Mary Campbell, the latter would no 
doubt have been as devoted as the former; but to 
say that the poet's wife has suffered by the appear- 
ance of Mary Campbell is a pure surmise, and the 
outcome of a quasi- Stevensonian brain. The poet 
was an ordinary mortal, but his characters are not to 
be found in every man you meet in Fleet Street or 
Broadway; and in purely love affairs he was the 
strangest and most wayward son of Adam that ever 
trod the soil. Woman was to him what the Yankee 
girl is to Max O'Rell — a person whose path should 
be strewn with roses, and if the poet in his married 
state often remembered his Highland Mary, and 
spoke with candour regarding her, what man or wo- 
man would deny that he was only thoroughly human? 
The infinite pathos, the extraordinary superstition, 
the sublime faith, are all entwined around that inci- 
dent on the banks of the Ayrshire stream, and no won- 
der that the darling Son of Scottish Poesy gave vent 
to his feelings in such matchless verse. Mary Camp- 
bell's name will ever be cherished with the fondest 
affection, but never shall we say that it is to us more 
precious than that of Jean Armour. It is too late in 
the day to blast the bright halo of romance which 
surrounds the memory of Highland Mary, and to 
impugn the poet's candour in connection with that 
pathetic episode in his phenomenally amorous 
career. One who looks at events with the spectacles 



BONNIE JEAN. 5 

of a historian will not be compelled to grope through 
darkness to ascertain the unmistakable reliability of 
the poet concerning his passion for Mary Campbell, 
and his temporary anguish at the attitude of Jean 
and her responsible guardians. 

Jean Armour's first interview with the poet was of 
an amusing nature. She was engaged hanging 
clothes which had been newly washed, and Burns, 
accompanied by his dog, chanced to pass the green. 
The member of the canine race with a disregard of 
the labours of the girl ventured to walk on the linen, 
with the result that Jean shied a missle of some kind 
at the offending animal, and the liklihood is she 
missed, the female arm not being made for such sport. 
The dog's misdemeanour enabled the two to engage 
in conversation, and before they parted they were 
what we in Scotland term "speak acquaint." This 
incident is only another illustration of what an acci- 
dent may bring forth. If any dog justified its exist- 
ence that one did. The whole incident is worthy the 
brush of some artist, and we are confident Burns' 
students would be pleased to possess copies. The 
subsequent disregard of the proprieties and the vicis- 
situdes of the couple are saddening in the extreme ; 
but it is sheer folly to be indignant, as urban Scot- 
land is to-day familiar with hundreds of similiar 
cases. Burns was not solely to blame for the un- 
fortunate position in which Jean Armour was placed. 
The parents of Jean became incensed at both ; and 
the one lover dodging the representatives of the law 
and the other banished from the parental roof, is a 
picture which must appeal to the sympathies of man- 
kind — a picture dismal in its reality, and without a 
glimmer of sunshine to dispel the awful gloom. But 
the sun did not always remain behind the clouds. 
Genius, or abilities, or graces of any kind, should 



6 BONNIE JEAN. 

not be taken into account in deciding - questions of 
State, Church, or Law, and we fancy Burns would 
have been the last person in the world to have 
differed from such a dictum. But there are many 
to-day who will say a person of the mental grandeur 
of Burns should have been treated with more consid- 
eration. Not at all; his faults were of his own mak- 
ing, and the law makes no distinction of persons. 
There is this point in Burns' favour, that he never 
would have given Jean the cold shoulder, time alone 
being all that was necessary to put matters right. 
Jean's father was not overstepping the bounds of 
propriety in taking out a warrant, but we think that 
in a moment of wrath, and when their pride felt the 
sting, the parents treated Jean somewhat harshly. 
The acclamation of a discerning public healed the 
sore, although the inconsistency of Jean's father is 
apt to make us grin. Even in an estimate of Bonnie 
Jean a subject like the above cannot be omitted. 
The vicissitudes must have had an effect upon the 
after career of Jean. All through these troubles 
she bore up bravely, quietly, and lovingly. The 
alliance was creditable to Burns. That it was highly 
expedient cannot be doubted. Morality has its codes, 
and poor, unfortunate Burns did not allow his com- 
peers to cavil at his preaching. Altogether the poet 
is picturesque here. It is appropriate to introduce 
at this stage one or two of the poet's references to 
his wife. 

To Miss Peggy Chalmers he wrote : — 
"I have married my Jean. I had a long and 
much-loved fellow creature's happiness or misery in 
my determination, and I durst not trifle with so im- 
portant a deposit ; nor have I any cause to repent it. 
If I have not got polite tittle-tattle, modish manners, 
and fashionable address, I am not sickened and dis- 



BONNIE JEAN. 7 

quieted with the multiform curse of boarding-school 
affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, 
the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and 
the kindest heart in the country." 

To Mrs. Dunlop (his valued correspondent), he 
said in a letter: — "Your surmise, madam, is just; I 
am indeed a husband. The most placid good nature 
and sweetness of disposition ; a warm heart, grate- 
fully devoted with all its powers to love me ; vigor- 
ous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the 
best advantage by a more than commonly handsome 
figure ; these, I think, in a woman, may make a good 
wife, though she should never have read a page but 
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, nor 
have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny 
pay- wedding. " 

And of the poet himself Jean said, in a conversa- 
tion with Hew Ainslie, " He was never fractious — 
aye gude-natured and kind baith to the bairns and 
to me. " All the facts obtainable as to the life of the 
couple go to show that Jean on no occasion proved a 
traitor. Throughout the eight years of light and 
darkness, when there was a variety of circumstances 
sufficient to cool the ardour of most lovers, the two 
understood each other to a nicety. There is one in- 
cident which will ever redound to the credit of 
Bonnie Jean. In itself it is the highest monument 
in favour of her prudence and the intensity of her 
love. The daughter of the poet, born in March, 
1 791, was brought home to the house of Burns, and 
taken charge of by Mrs. Burns. The child was soon 
after found by Jean's father in the same cradle with 
a babe of her own, and, in order to keep down din, 
she replied to her father that the second baby was 
one of whom she was taking temporary charge for a 
sick friend. Jean brought up the child to woman- 



8 BONNIE JEAN. 

hood, always putting it on an equality with her own 
offspring. We don't think it is too much to say that 
one woman out of three would have failed, and 
failed miserably, in Jean Armour's position. Our 
remark places a reflection upon the mammoth genius 
whom Jean adored and served with a fidelity seldom 
exhibited in the pages of romance and history ; but 
when we take into account that the stream of poesy 
was often kept back by the sluices of adversity, mis- 
fortune, and occasional bacchanalian enjoyments, we 
cannot, if we are to display the undisguised truth, 
come to any other conclusion. Spite of the oppor- 
tunities for display of the old Adam, Jean Armour 
adopted the attitude of a trained diplomat. We 
shall mainly attribute her success to her homeliness, 
amiability, sound common sense, and long-suffer- 
ing. 

When we sometimes stroll past Alloway Kirkyard, 
an incident full of the richest pathos, generally 
crosses our mind. The incident displays the hero- 
ism of Bonnie Jean. In the Spring after Burns died, 
two men, passing through Dumfries, visited St. 
Michael's Churchyard. Being strangers, they did 
not know where Burns' remains lay. They observed 
a female in deep mourning, sitting on the ground, 
and one of them addressed her as follows: — "Mis- 
tress, we are strangers, and we would feel obliged if 
you could show us the grave of Burns." Pointing 
to the mound at her feet, and bursting into tears, she 
answered, "That is his grave, and I am his widow." 
The two men apologized for their intrusion, ten- 
dered their heartfelt condolence, and left the spot to 
study the picture. Had the spirit of the bard been 
hovering around the spot, wouldn't there have been 
cause for thankfulness at the attitude of Jean ? The 
world was not the same to her since her dearest 



BONNIE JEAN. 9 

friend was not of it ; the poetry of cold type was not 
the poetry of the human being. 

Before we close this paper we shall give an ac- 
count of another incident, equally reliable. One 
beautiful Saturda)^ in the Autumn of 1893, we were 
standing on the auld brig o' Doon. A fierce noon- 
day sua caused visitors to seek the sylvan shade, the 
trouts ever and anon jumped out of the water, the 
larks rendered a paean of praise, the trees and 
the flowers sent forth their sweetest perfume, and 
the whirr of the reaping machine spoke of the good- 
ness of the Wise Providence who rules over us. 

On the road was an aged figure — a pilgrim at the 
shrine of Robin. He was talkative — he came from 
America. "I have," he said, "long wished to see 
the auld clay biggin, and the banks and braes o' 
Bonnie Doon; to-day I have seen them, and shall go 
home to die in peace. " Unquestionably noble words. 
They inform us of what the poet did for humanity. 
Not Jean alone, but all mankind mourned his loss; 
and this American wanderer, perhaps living near the 
Alleghany ranges, could not think he had done his 
duty on earth without crossing the wide Atlantic to 
pay his devotions at the shrine of Burns. There is 
a religion in the two incidents more deep and more 
vital than that of the bellicose Christians who parade 
their sanctity. 

We hold Jean's name in honour because she hero- 
ically and cheerfully did her part as the wife of 
Burns; and moreover, did she not, throughout the 
thirty-eight years of her widowhood — she was but 
twenty-three years of age when she married — defend 
the poet's name and fame when numerous attacks 
were made by unscrupulous critics and nonentities ? 
The Doon and the Ayr, whose praises are chanted 
in every corner of the habitable globe — in the dc- 



io BONNIE JEAN. 

mesncs of the rich, and in the cotters' houses and log 
cabins of the poor — are as classical as the Nile and 
the Ganges; Mauchline, Tarbolton, and Alloway, 
are as famous as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho; 
but the rushing waters of sentiment, although they 
sometimes benumb the tongue and stay the pen, 
shall not prevent us from laying this wreath upon 
the grave of Bonnie Jean. 




BONNIE JEAN. II 

BONNIE JEAN. 



By James Gillan, 



A picture hangs upon the wall 
Of this dim city home of mine, 
And ofttimes as my glances fall 
Upon its face it seems to shine, 
And smile as in the days gone bye, 
When Cupid drew aside the screen 
That hid from his enraptured eye 
The beaming face of Bonnie Jean. 

The colour mantles on the brow 
O'er which the raven love locks play 
The swarthy face once more aglow 
Beams like a sunny day in May, 
And in the jet black eyes again 
The tender light of love is seen 
And from the lips a dulcet strain 
Keeps murmuring of Bonnie Jean. 

A cloud across the forehead creeps, 

A darker flash in the eyes 

As some stern thought unbridled sweeps — 

Or memories of base deeds arise 

To fill his human heart with ire 

And raise an anger swift and keen, 

Yet still the lips like some sweet lyre 

Keep murmuring of Bonnie Jean. 

I see him in my fancy rove 

Through smiling meadows — round the hills. 

I hear his laughter in the grove, 

I hear his music by the rills 



BONNIE JEAN. 

That tarried in their winding flight 
Beneath the silv'ry moon at 'een 
While he sang to the starry night 
The praises of his Bonnie Jean. 

He tuned all tender strings that lie 
Beneath the keyboard of the heart 
From music scrolls that filled the sky. 
And poesy held the leaves apart 
While he sang loud, for coming days 
A song more sweet than e'er had been 
Sent up from mortal heart in praise 
Of Scotland and his Bonnie Jean. 

I do not deem my cottage poor, 
This picture is a richer gem 
Than any glittering Kohenoor 
Upon a princely diadem, 
And like a star it points the way 
By Scotia's choral pastimes green 
Where sweetest memories may stray 
With Robbie and his Bonnie Jean. 



BONNIE JEAN. 13 

BONNIE JEAN. 



By Dr. Robert Chambers. 
From "The Life and Writings of Robert Bums." 



*** In the first of these versicles, he alludes to the 
attachment which he had fotmd for the most cele- 
brated of all his heroines, and his subsequent wife, 
Jean. She was the daughter of a master-mason 
named Armour, residing in the village of Mauchline. 
Her husband has perfectly described her at this pe- 
riod of her life — 

'A dancin', sweet, young handsome quean, 
Of guileless heart !' 

The acquaintance seems to have commenced not 
long after the poet took up his residence at Moss- 
giel. There was a race at Mauchline in the end of 
April, and there it was customary for the young 
men, with little ceremony, to invite such girls as they 
liked off the street into a humble dancing-hall, where 
a fiddler had taken up his station to give them 
music. The payment of a penny for a dance was 
held by the minstrel as guerdon sufficient. Burns 
and Jean happened to be in the same dance, but not 
as partners, when some confusion and a little merri- 
ment was excited by his dog tracking his footsteps 
through the room. He playfully remarked to his 
partner that * he wished he could get any of the las- 
sies to like him as well as his dog did. ' A short 
while after, he passed through the Mauchline wash- 
ing-green, where Jean, who had overheard his re- 
mark, was bleaching clothes. His dog running 
over the clothes, the young maiden desired him to 
call it off, and this led them into conversation. 



i 4 BONNIE JEAN. 

Archly referring to what passed at the dance, she 
asked him if ' he had yet got any of the lassies to like 
him as well as his dog ?' From that time their in- 
timacy commenced. The affections of Burns were 
quickly centred upon her. There were other 
maidens in Mauchline, some with weightier attrac- 
tions, but no one could henceforth compete with 
Jean. So he himself tells us: — 

In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, 

The pride of the place and its neighborhood a', 
Their carriage and dress a stranger would guess, 

In Lon'on or Paris, they'd gotten it a'. 
Miss Miller is fine, Miss Maryland's divine, 

Miss Smith she has wit and Miss Betty is braw, 
There's beauty and fortune to get wi' Miss Morton ; 

But Armour's the Jewel for me o' them a'. 
* * * * 

The commencement of Burns' acquaintance with 
his Jean has already been touched upon. This young 
woman had now been for upwards of a year tne god- 
dess of his idolatry. He had, rather oddly, written 
no songs which can be certainly traced as in her 
honour; but he had expressed his admiration of her 
in his Epistle to Davie, in the Address to The Dei/, 
and The Vision. When it appeared in the Spring of 
1786, that love had become transgression, Burns and 
brother were beginning to fear that their farm would 
prove a ruinous concern. He yielded, nevertheless, 
to the wish of his unhappy partner to acknowledge 
her as his wife, and thus repair as far as possible the 
consequences of their error. He gave her such an 
acknowledgment in writing, a document sufficient in 
the law of Scotland to constitute what is called an 
irregular, though perfectly valid, marriage. Jean 
probably expected that, if her parents were first 
made acquainted with her fault by the announce- 
ment of clandestine nuptials, they would look more 



BONNIE JEAN. 15 

mildly upon it; for such is a common course of cir- 
cumstances in her rank of life in Scotland. But it 
was otherwise in this case. Knowing well that 
Burns was not in flourishing- circumstances it ap- 
peared to the father that marriage, so far from 
mending the matter, made it worse. Burns came 
forth on this occasion with all the manliness which 
his character would have led us to expect. He ad- 
mitted the hopelessness of his present circumstances; 
but he offered to go out to Jamaica in the hope of 
bettering them, and of coming home in a few years 
and claiming Jean as his wife. If this plan should 
not meet Mr. Armour's approbation, he was willing 
to descend even to the condition of a common la- 
bourer, in order to furnish means for the present 
support of his wife and her expected offspring. It 
does not seem to have been one of his hopes that the 
wondrous poems lying in the table- drawer at Moss- 
giel could help in aught to lighten the burden he 
was willing to incur. Mr. Armour met every pro- 
posal with rejection. The course he took will only 
be intelligible if we reflect that in Scottish village 
there is little of the delicacy as to female purity 
which prevails in more refined circles. Armour re- 
flected that his daughter, if free from her connec- 
tions with the ill-starred poet, might yet hope for a 
comfortable settlement in life. He therefore an- 
nounced his resolution, if possible to annul the 
marriage, such as it was. Yielding to his demand, 
probably preferred in no mild mood, Jean surren- 
dered the paper to her angry father. There were 
some violent and distressing scenes between the 
parties. Not endowed by nature with very deep or 
abiding feelings, and depressed in spirit by the sense 
of her error, Jean, to the utter confusion of Burns, 
appeared less willing to cleave to her husband than 



1 6 BONNIE JEAN. 

to her father. The poet viewed her conduct with 
deep resentment, and was thrown by it into a state 
of mind, which, according to his own confession, 
'had very nearly given him one or two of the prin- 
cipal qualifications for a place among those who have 
lost the chart and mistaken the reckoning of ration- 
ality. ' He instantly made up his mind to exile from 
his much-beloved country. His poverty and impru- 
dence made that course desirable, and, after the 
mortification he had met with, he had no longer the 
wish to stay at home. He therefore agreed with a 
Dr. Douglas to go out to Jamaica as a book-keeper 
on his estate. To raise money for his passage, Mr. 
Hamilton advised him to publish his poems by sub- 
scription, believing that his name had already se- 
cured him a sufficient number of friends to make the 
sale of a small volume certain, and to a moderate 
extend profitable. We have seen, from man) 7 ex- 
pressions in the poems of the past writer, that Burns 
was in a state of mind regarding them to make this 
plan highly acceptable to him. Accordingly, with- 
out any loss of time, proposals or subscription papers 
were thrown off and circulated amongst the friends 
of the unfortunate bard. 



Though he had been effectually separated, or, it 
might be said divorced from Jean Armour, and was 
much incensed hy her conduct and that of her rela- 
tives, he had never been able to detach her from his 
heart. Gusts of passion for different individuals had 
passed through his bosom, even while resting in 
what he called ' the Greenland bay of difference' in 
Edinburgh ; but still the image of the simple Mauch- 
line girl resided at the core, and would not quit its 
place. On now returning to his rustic retreat, and 



BONNIE JEAN. 17 

accidentally meeting her, his ancient flames were re- 
vived, and he was welcomed to her father's house. 
In a short time the pair became as intimate as ever. 



The bachelor life of Burns was now drawing to a 
close. His new home proved wholly unready for 
the reception of his wife, he had obtained temporary 
accomodation for her at a neighboring farm. Ac- 
cordingly, in the first week of December (1788) he 
conducted Mrs. Burns to the banks of the Nith. 
During the preceeding week two servant-lads and a 
servant-girl had migrated thither from Mauchline, 
with some cart-loads of the plenishing made by Mor- 
rison; besides, I presume, a handsome four-posted 
bed, which Mrs. Dunlop had contributed as her mar- 
riage gift. The servant-lass, named Elizabeth 
Smith, still lives at Irvine [185 1]. She reports that 
Mrs. Burns was anxious, on going into a district 
where she was wholly a stranger, to obtain the ser- 
vices of a young woman whom she already knew. 
Elizabeth was engaged accordingly, but not till her 
father, in his anxiety for her moral wellfare, had 
exacted a formal promise from Burns to keep a strict 
watch over her conduct, and, in particular, to exer- 
cise her duly in the Catechism, in both of which 
points she admits he was most faithful to his prom- 
ise. About a mile below Ellisland there is a small 
tract of ground which has once been encircled by the 
waters of the Nith, partly through natural channels 
and partly through an artificial trench. Here rises 
an old dismantled tower, with more modern build- 
ings adjoining to it on two of its sides — the whole 
forming the farm-buildings of The Isle ; for such is 
the name of the place, still remained, although one 
of the ancient water courses is now only a rusty 



18 BONNIE JEAN. 

piece of ground. The place, which has an antiqua- 
ted, and even somewhat romantic appearance, was 
the property of Mr. Newell, writer in Dumfries, 
whose family had lived in it during the Summer, but 
only for a short time, in consequence of certain noc- 
turnal sounds in the old tower having led to a belief 
that it was haunted. What added a little, or per- 
haps not a little to the cerieness of the spot, was that 
the old burying-ground of Dunscore, containing the 
sepulchre of the dreaded persecutor, Grierson, of 
Lagg, was in the immediate neighbourhood. Such 
was the ' moated grange, ' at which the illustrious 
poet welcomed home the mistress of his heart — the 
fascinating, never to be forgotten, Jean Armour. 
We may well believe that it was a time of great 
happiness to Burns when he first saw his mistress 
installed in her little mansion, and felt himself the 
master of the household, however humble — looked 
up to by a wife as ' the goodman ' and by a host of 
dependants as 'the master.' Who can refrain from 
sympathizing with the great ill-requited poet in this 
brief exception from a painful life. 



BONNIE JEAN. 19 

BONNIE JEAN. 



By Robert Burns Begg. 

Re-printed from the Bums Chronicle, No. /, by permission 
of the author. 



Jean Armour was born in February 1767, at 
Mauchline, Ayrshire, where her father James Ar- 
mour was a respectable master-mason or contractor, 
in good employment and enjoying- the confidence 
and esteem of the district in which he was located, 
He appears to have been exemplar} 7 in his life but 
like man) 7 worthy men he was somewhat rigid and 
austere in his disposition and belonged to the stricter 
sect of Religionists called the " Auld Lichts. " Mrs. 
Armour seems to have been an affectionate and de- 
voted wife and mother, but her mental bias differed 
from that of her husband, and appears to have par- 
taken somewhat of the gay and frivolous. They 
had a family of eleven children, whom they reared 
and maintained creditabl) 7 and comfortably ; for Mr. 
Armour, in addition to the income derived from his 
trade, was proprietor of house property of some 
value in the village. His daughter, Jean, was a 
bright sprightly and affectionate girl, and she was 
naturally adored by her parents — her father espe- 
cially being intensely proud of her. On her part, 
she seems to have had a deep regard and veneration 
for her father, as is evidenced by the fact that she, 
at the most trying crisis of a young girl's life, was 
ready at his command to sacrifice the dearest and 
tenderest aspirations of her nature. 

Her childhood was spent at Mauchline amid the 
usual associations surrounding Scottish village life, 



2o BONNIE JEAN. 

and when Burns, (then in his 26th year) along with 
his widowed mother and his brothers and sisters, 
came to reside at Mossgicl, within a mile from 
Manchline, she had barely emerged from her ' ' teens. ' ' 
From the description of her handed down to us by 
those who knew her at this interesting period of her 
life, we gather that she was a remarkably sweet and 
attractive brunette of a bright affectionate nature, 
gifted with an attractive smiling face, lighted up by 
a pair of very bewitching dai'k eyes. Her person 
was well formed and firmly knit and her movements 
were at all times graceful and easy. In manner she 
was frank and unaffected and she was kindly and 
winning in her disposition. 

Her first meeting with Burns did not occur until 
sometime after the Burns family settled at Mossgicl, 
in March, 1784. The meeting was a casual one, at 
a rustic dance in Manchline on the evening of the 
village races. On that occassion she does not appear 
to have had any direct intercourse with her future 
husband, but she seems to have treasured up in her 
heart an observation which she overheard him mak- 
ing in his usual frank jocular style. During one of 
the dances, some confusion and merriment was 
occasioned by Burns' collie persisting in tracking its 
master's footsteps and on Burns' attention being 
drawn to his intrusive follower, he said : "I wish I 
could find a lassie as fond of me as my dog." Very 
shortly after the evening of the dance, Jean was one 
day engaged bleaching linen on the village green of 
Mauchline, when Burns passed accompanied as usual 
by his faithful collie. The dog in its frisky frolics 
intruded itsself among the cloth Jean was spreading 
on the grass, and she besought Burns to recall the 
animal to his side. Having complied with her re- 
quest, Burns naturally lingered to exchange obser- 



BONNIE JEAN. 21 

vations with her, and her frank remark — " Have you 
found any lassie yet to love ye as well as yer dog " — 
accompanied, as it no doubt was, by a fascinating 
archness of expression, must have gone straight to 
the Poet's highly impressionable heart. With two 
such natures an acquaintanceship thus begun on a 
key-note so suggestive, could lead to only one result 
— an immediate attraction to each other, by the 
tenderest and most overpowering predilection which 
sways the human heart. 

Opportunities for the lovers meeting were not in- 
frequent, for Burns' favorite " howff " during his 
leisure hours, was the Whiteford Arms — an inn so 
closely adjoining the Armours' house, that con- 
fidences could easily be interchanged at pleasure 
from one of the back windows of the inn, which 
looked into one of the windows of Jean's house be- 
hind. A close and tender intimacy thus became 
established, and it was maintained for upwards of a 
year, by meetings as frequent as Burns' occupation 
on his farm rendered possible. Unfortunately, these 
interviews had to be conducted with the utmost 
secrecy, for both lovers well knew that old Mr. 
Armour's bitterest prejudices would be opposed to 
the idea of Burns as his son-in-law. This inter- 
course naturally led to Burns becoming attached to 
Jean by a love as ardent, permanent and sincere, as 
even his deep emotional nature was capable of feel- 
ing. We find this passion, in its earliest stages, 
finding expression in such versiclesas The Mauchline 
Belles and The Mauchline Lady, until it gradually 
acquires a deeper and more earnest tone, and culmin- 
ates at length in the fervid impassioned appeal on 
Jean's behalf, introduced into the admirable epistle 
to David Sillar : 



22 BONNIE JEAN. 

" O, all ye Pow'rs who rule above ! 
O Thou whose very self art love ! 
Thou know'st my word sincere 
The life blood streaming thro' my heart, 
Or my more dear Immortal part 

Is not more fondly dear ! 
When heart carroding care and grief 

Deprive my soul of rest, 
Her dear idea brings relief, 

And solace to my breast. 
Thou being all-seeing, 

O hear my fervent pray'r ! 
Still take her, and make her, 

Thy most peculiar care !" 

Was ever weak woman thus wo'ed — and who can 
wonder if the simple hearted village maiden, in all 
the loving trust of her affectionate and confiding 
nature, blindly surrendered herself to a lover so 
impassioned, and who could woo so effectively ? 

" Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us, 
He knows each chord its varying tone, 

Each spring its various bias : 
Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What's done we partly may compute. 

But know not what's resisted. ' ' 

At length the time arrived when concealment of 
their tender intercourse was no longer possible, and 
in the Spring of 1786, Burns and Jean signed a 
formal acknowledgement of marriage, and thus be- 
come legally, although informally, husband and wife. 
This declaration was signed openly and was en- 
trusted to the custody of Mr. Robert Aitken, Writer, 
Ayr, a mutual friend both of Burns and of the 
Armours. The biographers of the Poet, following 
Lockhart, look upon this natural proceeding on 



BONNIE JEAN. 23 

Burns' part as an act of mere justice and necessity, 
rather than as a purely voluntary one. It is dfficult 
to see why it should be so regarded. His affection 
for Jean was deep, permanent and sincere, and in 
every way it differed widely from the erratic and 
ephemeral attachments he was so prone to form. 
From the earliest period of their acquaintance he 
seems to have been drawn towards her by a strong 
community of feeling, and it is clear that from the 
first, he appropriated her as peculiarly "his own" 
in the tenderest sense of the phrase. The hopes 
which he centred in her were not the mere ardent 
aspirations of the moment, but a fond and persistent 
clinging to the happy prospect of life-long and lov- 
ing companionship with her in the placid haven of 
domestic life. She was undoubtedly his beau ideal of 
a wife, suited in every sense to his nature and dis- 
position and eminently fitted in a practical way, for 
the line of life he had adopted at the time their in- 
timacy began. In a letter which he sometime after- 
wards wrote to Mrs. Dnnlop of Dunlop, he thus 
expresses his estimate of Jean's suitability as a wife: 
— " The most placid good nature and sweetness of 
disposition, a warm heart gratefully devoted with all 
its powers to love me, vigorous health, and sprightly 
cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a 
more than common handsome figure — these I think 
in a woman may make a good wife though she 
should not have read a page but the Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testament, nor have danced in 
brighter assembly than a penny pay wedding." 

In the early stages of their intimacy no immediate 
views of marriage could be entertained by either of 
them, and at the best their union must have been a 
remote, although not the less, a very real, as well as 
a very happy, prospect. His family had then newly 



24 BONNIE JEAN. 

entered on their tenancy of Mossgiel farm with their 
means sorely crippled by recent losses at Lochlea, 
and as month after month sped over the heads of 
the happy lovers, drawing the tender tie between 
them still closer and closer, their prospect of 
marriage became more and more remote. Mossgiel 
farm had failed to yield the return anticipated and 
by the time the declaration of marriage was signed, 
Burns had actually formed the resolution to leave 
his native land and seek for better fortune in 
Jamaica, and it was fondly hoped that the private 
marriage would be regarded not only in the light of 
a reparation to the Armours, for the distress entailed 
upon them, but that it might also secure for Jean 
the shelter of her father's roof until Burns had pro- 
vided for her a home in the country of his adoption. 
In their plans thus anxiously and lovingly laid, 
the unfortunate pair failed to take into account the 
unyielding prejudice of old Mr. Armour. The in- 
telligence of his daughter's unfortunate condition 
was to him a terrible humiliation, and he is said to 
have swooned away under the blow, and far from 
the attempted reparation lessening his displeasure it 
only intensified his opposition to such an extent, that 
rather than entertain the prospect of Burns ever 
claiming his daughter as his wife, he induced Mr. 
Aitken, the custodier of the declaration of marriage, 
to cancel the signatures attached to that document. 
There is no doubt, that Jean, in her utter wretched- 
ness, was induced by filial love and obedience, to 
acquiesce in her parent's harsh and unjust proceed- 
ing and she was at once sent off to Paisley, to live 
with her uncle there, so as to be beyond the reach of 
Burns' seductive influence. The misery she must 
have endured during her temporary retirement at 
Paisley, no one can ever estimate. Severed from 



BONNIE JEAN. 25 

him she had loved and still loved so fondly and 
blindly, and severed too by a harshness and injustice 
to which she had actually although unwillingly been 
a party — discarded in a sense by the parents she 
revered so highly, and intruded into the house of 
relatives, who, at the best, must have regarded her 
presence among them in the light of a painful neces- 
sity — her thoughts must have been little calculated 
to impart either comfort or hopefulness to the pros- 
pect that lay before her. 

To Burns, too, the rupture must have brought an 
intolerable load of misery. He was naturally deeply 
incensed at the treatment he had experienced at the 
hands of Jean's parents, and he was cut to the heart 
at Jean's " perfidy," as he styled it, in allowing her- 
self to be induced to repudiate her obligations as his 
wife. He thus expresses his feelings on this painful 
occasion in a letter to his friend, John Ballantyne, 
Ayr, "would you believe it though I had not a hope 
nor a wish to make her mine after her conduct, yet 
when he [Aitkenj, told me the names were cut out 
of the paper, my heart died within me — he cut my 
heart with the news." This certainly is not the 
language of a man who has been released from an 
unkindly and lifelong bond, in which he had invol- 
untarily entangled himself from a mere sense of 
justice. 

It is true, that in some of his more rollicking let- 
ters to his boon companions and more intimate 
associates, he attempts in a spirit of bravado to make 
light of the calamity which had befallen him, but 
the attempt is a poor one at the best, and every now 
and then expressions escape him which disclose only 
too painfully the utter desolation of heart which 
Jean's unlooked for desertion had entailed upon him. 
No student of Burns' life and character would dream 



26 BONNIE JEAN. 

of taking him aa serieux in letter of the nature re- 
ferred to, but would rather prefer to gather his real 
sentiments from the language he employs in address- 
ing his more staid and serious correspondents, such 
as Dr. Moore, whom in the Summer recess of 1787, 
he thus writes: — " It was a shocking affair which I 
cannot yet hear to recollect and it had very nearly 
given me one or two of the principal qualifications 
for a place among those who have lost the chart and 
mistaken the reckoning of rationality. " In writing 
also to Dr. Arnot, of Dalquhatswood, about the same 
period, he says, " How I bore this, can only be con- 
ceived, all powers of recital labour far far behind. 
There is a pretty large portion of bedlam in the com- 
position of a poet at any time, but on this occasion I 
was nine parts and nine-tenths out of ten stark star- 
ing mad." 

His allusions to this painful theme in his poetic 
effusions of this period are also crouched in a fervour 
and sincerity of expression which leaves no doubt of 
the depth and permanency of his unhappiness. We 
find pointed pathetic suggestions of it in his sonnet 
composed on Spring and in the most exquisite of all 
his poems — his address to a mountain daisy. We 
find it too expressed in plainer and more pointed 
language in his "Ode to Ruin." 

1 ' With stern resolved despairing eye, 

I see each aimed dart, 
For one has cut rny dearest tie, 

And quivers in my heart. 
Then lowering and pouring, 

The storm no more I dread : 
Though thick'ning and black'ning 

Round my devoted head." 

But the most expressive of all, is his reference to 



BONNIE JEAN. 27 

the subject to be found in "The Lament" which he 
composed to this occasion. 

" The plighted faith, the mutual flame, 
The oft protested Powers above, 
The promised father's tender name : 
These were the pledges of my love. ' ' 

" Ye winged hours that o'er us passed, 

Enraptured more the more enjoyed, 
Your dear remembrance in my breast, 

My fondly treasured thoughts employed, 
That breast how dreary now and void, 

For her too scanty once of room, 
Even every ray of hope destroy'd, 

And not a wish to glid the gloom." 

The rupture seems to have occured early in Spring 
and Jean did not return from Paisley until July. 
Actuated by his clinging affection for her, Burns 
seems to have made an effort to re-establish their 
intercourse immediately on her return to her father's 
house, but Mrs. Armour repelled the Poet's over- 
tures with anger and disdain, and even Jean herself, 
influenced by her parents, seems to have discouraged 
Burns' well meant and loving advances. Fortun- 
ately for Burns, he, unlike poor Jean, had in the 
midst of these painful experiences many engrossing 
subjects to distract his thoughts. He had, in the 
first place, the publication of the first edition of his 
poems, which he was then engaged in seeing through 
the press, at Kilmarnock. But his most effectual 
distraction was his brief but romantic engagement 
to " Highland Mary " which however fickle and in- 
consistent it may appear to be, actually occured dur- 
ing the interval which elapsed between Jean's de- 
sertion and his departure for Edinburgh, in Novem- 
ber. To Burns, love was an absolute and clamant 
necessity, and in his desire to supplant Jean, he 



28 BONNIE JEAN. 

could not have selected a more endearing substitute 
than the sweet dairy-maid at Coilsfield, and the very 
impetuosity of his solemn matrimonial engagement 
with Mary Campbell at a time when his circum- 
stances almost precluded the possibility of marriage, 
only affords proof of the "widowed" condition of 
his heart. 

In September, 1786, Jean, in the house of her par- 
ents at Mauchline, gave birth to twins — a boy and 
girl. Intelligence of the event was at once com- 
municated to Burns at Mossgiel, and arrangements 
were made for transferring the boy to Mossgiel to 
be nurtured there, by the Poet's mother and sisters, 
while the girl remained with its mother at Mauchline. 
The boy bore his father's name, and in after life he 
attained to a good position in the Government Civil 
Service. The girl was named Jean afer her mother, 
but she died after a brief existence of only fourteen 
months, and was interred in Mauchline Churchyard. 
The birth of Jean's children, did not tend to pro- 
mote a reconciliation with the Armours. On the 
contrary it seems to have embittered their prejudices 
more and more, and in order to make the rupture 
permanent and complete, formal steps were taken 
ex facie ecclesiae to undo whatever legal effect the 
private marriage might be supposed to have. 

These unhappy proceedings seem to have barely 
terminated when Dr. Blacklock's suggestion that 
Burns should come to Edinburgh, opened up before 
him, a new and dazzling prospect, and on 27 th 
November, 1786, he left Mossgiel for Edinburgh, 
and did not return until June of the year following. 
In the interval Jean remained in her father's house 
at Mauchline, striving to find in her novel duty as a 
mother some little solace for her misery and un- 
happincss, while Burns, even in the midst of the ex- 






BONNIE JEAN. 29 

citing experiences of his first winter in the Scottish 
Metropolis, found his thoughts oft reverting to Jean, 
at Mauchline. Writing to Gavin Hamilton, in the 
beginning of 1787, he says, " to tell the truth I feel 
a miserable blank in my heart from the want of 
her." It is not surprising therefore to find that on 
his return from Edinburgh, in the following summer, 
his first thought is "his Jean " and instead of taking 
up his residence at Mossgiel, he puts up at the 
Whiteford Arms, and he seems to have remained 
there for several days, previous to his secret pil- 
grimage to Argyleshire, to ascertain the particulars 
of Mary Campbell's sad and untimely death. 

His reason for taking up his abode at "Johnnie 
Dows, " must have been his desire to renew his lov- 
ing intercourse with Jean, and he accordingly called 
at the Armours' house immediately on his arrival at 
Mauchline, ostensibly, according to his own state- 
ment, simply to see "his daughter" then an infant 
of barely nine months, but no doubt the child's 
mother was a still more potent attraction. One can 
fancy the rapture with which the lovers must have 
met after their painful and protracted severance. 
Their mutual affection remained unabated and but 
for the injudiciousness of Jean's parents, a complete 
re-union would no doubt have been the immediate 
result. Burns' proud nature had been sorely 
wounded by the harsh and disdainful treatment he 
had received during the previous summer, and his 
resentment towards Jean's parents was intensified 
by having super-added to it a feeling of utter con- 
tempt for their "mean servility" when he found 
himself — owing to the change in his worldly pros- 
pects — received by them with great civility and with 
every indication of their desire to promote the union 
which they had persistently rejected only a few 



3 o BONNIE JEAN. 

months before. 

The contempt which Burns felt at this sudden 
change of treatment, and the motives from which it 
sprung was too deep to be easily overcome, and 
although it does not seem to have interf erred in any 
way with his loving- intercourse with Jean, it pre- 
vented him from taking immediate steps to secure 
her happiness by re-instating her in her position as 
his wife. 

Under the influence of this feeling, Burns again 
returned to Edinburgh for a brief temporary visit, 
leaving jean and her child behind him in her father's 
house at Mauchline After spending sometime in 
Edinburgh and visiting at Harveston, Ochtertyre, 
and elsewhere, he returned to Edinburgh in the end 
of October. By this time it is clear that he had de- 
cided on a definite and practical means of livelihood 
for himself and those dependant upon him, and in 
accordance therewith, he makes an excursion to 
Dumfriesshire to inspect the farm of Ellisland, 
which he contemplated leasing. In combination 
with his farming project he conceived the idea of 
securing an appointment in the excise, so as to have 
"his commission in his pocket for any emergency of 
fortune." 

In this carefully planned and thoroughly sensible 
scheme there cannot be a doubt that Burns had 
uppermost in his heart a desire to find a suitable 
home for his wife and children, and when in the end 
of January 1788, in the very heart of his laboured 
love-traffic, with his "divine Clarinda," intelligence 
is conveyed to him in Edinburgh that poor Jean is 
once more under a cloud on his account, he acts with 
a promtitude and practical effect which is clearly 
indicative of a preconceived and deliberate resolution. 
At the time he received the intelligence he was dis- 



BONNIE JEAN. 31 

abled by an injury to one of his knees and he was pre- 
vented from hastening to jean's side as he otherwise 
would have done. He, however, wrote at once, to 
his steadfast friend, William Muir, of Tarbolton 
Mill — the veritable Willie of the now famed "Willie's 
Mill " — and solicited him and his wife to receive 
Jean into their house, until he — as he in nautical 
phrase states in a letter to his sea-faring friend 
Brown — "can himself take command." In little 
more than a fortnight he is on his way to Mossgiel, 
and immediately on his arrival he visits Jean in her 
retirement, and in his own language "reconciles her 
to her mother ; takes a room for her, and takes her 
to his arms." After a brief visit to Edinburgh in 
the beginning of March, Burns is back in Mauchline 
beside his wife, before the end of the month. Ten 
days previously Jean had again given birth to twins 
— two girls — both of whom died a few days after- 
wards, and so soon as the state of her health per- 
mitted, the reunited lovers went through a simple 
and binding formality in the business Chambers of 
Gavin Hamilton, Writer, in Mauchline, and Jean 
was once more, and openly reinstated in her position 
as Burns' wife. This marriage was solemnly con- 
firmed by the Kirk Session of Mauchline, on the 5th 
of August, and Burns and his wife took up their 
abode temporarily in a house in Mauchline, now 
forming the corner house of the street called Back 
Causeway overlooking the Churchyard of Mauchline. 
Here in a house of two rooms, Jean spent nearly 
four months of unalloyed happiness, after two years 
of deep mental anguish to both her and her husband. 
Happily this was all now at an end, and Burns in 
his correspondence at this period, breathes nothing 
but deep and fervent self-congratulation on the im- 
portant step he had taken. In a letter written by 



32 BONNIE JEAN. 

him, three months after the re-union, and addressed 
to Mrs. Dan lop, of Dunlop, he says in reference to 
his prospect of finding substantial happiness in his 
married life : " To jealousy or infidelity I am an 
equal stranger ; my preservative from the first is 
the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments 
of honour, and her attachment to me. My antidote 
against the last is my long and deep-rooted affection 
for her. I can easily fancy a more agreeable com- 
panion for my journey through life, but upon my 
honour I have never seen the individual instance. 
In household matters, of aptness to learn and 
activity to execute, she is eminently mistress ; and 
during my absence in Nithsdale she is regularly and 
constantly apprenticed to my mother and sisters in 
their dairy and other rural business." 

During the period that Mrs. Burns continued to 
reside at Mauchiine, Burns' time was almost equally 
divided between that place and Ellisland at the 
latter of which he was superintending the operations 
on his farm, and especially the erection of a new 
dwelling house, for the accommodation of his wife 
and children. The distance between the two places, 
was forty-six miles, and as the journey was per- 
formed on horseback, Burns often started from 
Ellisland as early as three in the morning. During 
this period, his deep and fervent attachment to his 
wife finds expression in his exquisite song, O' a the 
airts the wind can blaw, and the powerful effect of 
this truly powerful love ode, is much enhanced, if it 
is studied in the light of the loneliness and discom- 
fort which at this time surrounded Burns at Ellisland. 
He gives a graphic description of his experiences in 
a letter to Miss Chalmers: " Jean ' my Jean ' is still 
at Mauchiine, and I am building my house, for this 
hovel that I shelter in, while occasionally here is 



BONNIE JEAN. 33 

pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower 
that falls ; and I am preserved from being chilled to 
death by being- suffocated with smoke." In an 
atmosphere so prosaic and uninspiring, it is pleasant 
to think of the youthful husband and father, in his 
loneliness and discomfort, welcoming the breeze as 
laden with tender messages from that humble home 
in the west, over which the tenderest feelings of his 
heart hovered so fondly. 

We have too, in connection with this period, one 
of the only two letters which have been preserved, 
addressed by Burns to his wife. It is dated 12th 
September, 1788 

" My Dear Love: 

I received your kind letter with 
a pleasure which no letter but one from you could 
ha\^e given me. I dream of you the whole night 
long, but alas ! I fear it will be three weeks yet ere 
I can hope for the happiness of seeing you. My 
harvest is going on ; I have some to cut down still 
but I put in two stacks to-day, so I am as tired as a 
dog. * * * * I have written my 

long thought on letter to Mr. Graham, Commissioner 
of Excise, and have sent a sheet full of poetry be- 
sides. Now I talk of poetry, I had a fine strathspey 
among my hands, to make verses to, for Johnson's 
collection, which I intend, as my honeymoon song." 

The house at Ellisland was not completed at the 
time expected, although Burns supervised the opera- 
tions with a zeal and anxiety suggestive more of 
the ardour of the lover than the mere urgency of the 
husband and father. His appeal to his joiner, 
in regard to the delay in the building operations, is 
unique, and must have formed a genuine novelty in 
the usual correspondence connected with that 
worthy tradesman's business: 



34 BONNIE JEAN. 

" Necessity obliges me to go into my 
new house even before it be plastered. I will in- 
habit the one end until the other is finished. About 
three weeks more I think will at farthest be my time 
beyond which I cannot stay in this present house. 
If ever you wished to deserve the blessing of him 
that was ready to perish; if ever you were in a 
situation that a little kindness would have rescued 
you from many evils ; if ever you hope to find rest 
in future states of untried being, get these matters 
of mine ready." 

In spite of this fervid appeal the house was not fit 
for occupancy before winter set in, and Burns was 
obliged to secure a temporary residence in ' * the Isle, " 
a romantic spot, situated on the banks of the Nith, 
about a mile from Ellisland. Here, in the first week 
of December, 1788, he brought his young wife, pre- 
ceded by two servant lads and a servant girl, and 
some cart loads of furniture and other household 
plenishing. Who can doubt the joy and pride with 
which Mrs. Burns rejoined her husband in her new 
home, and his happiness too was, as may easily be 
imagined, in every sense complete. Two months 
later, in writing to a correspondent in Edinburgh, 
he bursts into the following glowing rhapsody, which 
must be regarded as merely the reflex of the happi- 
ness he himself was then experiencing: "Love is 
the Alpha and Omega of human enjoyment. All 
the pleasures, all the happiness of my humble com- 
peers flow immediately and directly from this 
delightful source. It is the spark of celestial fire 
which lights up the wintry hut of poverty, and 
makes the cheerful mansion, warm, comfortable, 
and gay. It is the examination of Divinity, that 
preserves the sons and daughters of rustic labour 



BONNIE JEAN. 35 

from degenerating into the brutes with which they 
daily hold converse. Without it, life to the poor in- 
mates of the cottage would be a damning gift." 

After a brief but happy period of six months spent 
at "the Isle," possession was at length obtained of 
their own house at Ellisland, and about three 
months afterwards Mrs. Burns gave birth to a son, 
named Francis Wallace, in compliment to Burns' 
steadfast friend, Mrs. Dunlop, who claimed descent 
from the Scottish Patriot. On the occasion of this 
birth, Burns' mother and sisters came to Ellisland, 
and affectionately nursed Mrs. Burns through her 
period of weakness and relieved her of the household 
and dairy duties. They brought with them the 
eldest son, Robert, now a boy of three years of age, 
who had, ever since his birth, resided with his 
grandmother and aunts, at Mossgiel. The warmest 
and most cordial love existed between Mrs. Burns, 
and the different members of her husband's family. 
In particular, she was affectionately attached to 
Burns' youngest sister, Isobel, afterwards Mrs. Begg, 
— then a bright intelligent girl, only four years her 
junior, and this attachment continued unbroken 
until it was severed by death, nearly half a century 
later. 

The experiences of Burns and his wife at Ellisland 
were all that heart could desire. He was leading a 
quiet domesticated yet active life, and alike in body 
and mind was experiencing the full benefit of it, 
while his wife in the loving companionship of her 
husband, and in the sweet cares of her family and 
household, found all that her womanly nature re- 
quired to fill to overflowing her cup of happiness. 
In a hitherto unpublished poem by Burns, commun- 
icated to us just as we were going to press, we have 
the following eloquent expression of contentment, 



36 BONNIE JEAN. 

love, and happiness, which formed the "home 
atmosphere " of the poet and his wife: 

" To gild her worth I asked no wealthy dower, 
My toil could feed her, and my arm defend ; 

I envied no man's riches ; no man's power, 
I asked of none to give, of none to lend. 

And she the faithful partner of my care, 

When ruddy evening streaked the western sky ; 

Looked towards the uplands if her mate was there, 
Or through the beeches cast an anxious eye." 

One loves to linger over the Ellisland period, for it 
formed undoubtedly the happiest episode of Burns' 
whole life, and who can fail to regret, not only for 
his sake, but also for his wife's, that it proved as 
brief as it was bright and happy. It endured for 
only three years, and during the whole of that period 
Burns is always seen at his best. His muse was 
never more prodigally responsive, and the finest 
effusions that he ever gave to the world were con- 
ceived in his placid domestic haven on the banks of 
the Nith. His To Mary in Heaven ; Tain o* Slianter; 
and Willie Brewed a Peek o Maut; form only a small 
part of his poetic productions at this time. His 
letters too have a dignity of expression, and an 
elevation and brilliancy of thought which indicate 
that all was well within, and the reason is very easy 
to divine. He was living in the midst of associa- 
tions which satisfied, and satisfied fully, every 
aspiration of his soul ; in his wife's affectionate 
society, and in the playful prattle of his children, he 
had, what was to him, a vital necessit3 T ; in his 
surroundings he had all that he could desire for the 
indulgence of his poetic communings with nature, 
while in the fellowship of intellectual and congenial 
friends, both in the neighborhood and from a dis- 
tance, he had abundant opportunities of indulging 



BONNIE JEAN. 37 

in his natural predilection for convivial social inter- 
course. Unfortunately, however, owing to his farm 
proving unprofitable he is compelled to revert to his 
excise commission which he had hitherto held in re- 
serve. His application to be appointed to the 
" Ride " in which he resided was successful but the 
extra work this new duty entailed upon him was a 
terrible drain on his natural vigour and energy. His 
excise division embraced a wide tract of country 
extending over ten parishes, and in one of his letters 
written in November, 1790, he says: "I am jaded 
to death with fatigue. For these two or three 
months, I have not ridden less than 200 miles on an 
average every week." Unfortunately, too, this 
change in Burns' occupation entailed on him in- 
cessant and lengthened absences from home, and 
from the society of his wife and children. Burns 
must have felt this deprivation very keenly, for he 
was a man of decidedly domestic habits and tastes, 
and the chief happiness of his life always centred in 
"those endearing connections consequent on the 
venerable names of husband and father." 

The glimpses afforded us of Mrs. Burns, at Ellis- 
land, in her new position of wife and mother, are 
disappointingly few and transient, but they all ex- 
hibit her as an active, industrious and frugal house- 
wife; a kind, liberal and considerate mistress; a 
devoted mother and an idolizing wife. There can- 
not be a doubt that she literally worshipped Burns, 
and that in her devotion to him, she actually 
attained to that lofty ideal, which forms the funda- 
mental principal of truest loyalty — a belief that " he 
could do no wrong." As an instance of this, refer- 
ence may here be made to her truly noble act of 
wifely self-abnegation in taking to her motherly 
bosom and nursing, as a child of her own, the in- 



38 BONNIE JEAN. 

fant "Betty," which "Anna wi' the gowden locks," 
had borne to Burns. The infant was born only ten 
days previous to the birth of her son, William Nicol 
Burns, in April, 1701, and as its unfortunate mother 
died in child-birth, Mrs. Burns adopted the mother- 
less infant and nursed and fostered it, with all a 
mother's tenderness and care, until "Betty" 
reached the years of maturity, and became in her 
turn, a happy and devoted wife and mother. Yet 
so quietly and unassumingly was this act of unpar- 
alleled charity and generosity performed by Burns' 
noblehearted wife, that few — very few, were ever 
aware of the fact. Indeed, Mrs. Burns' own father, 
old Mr. Armour, if he ever knew of it at all, was 
ignorant of it at the time he visited his daughter at 
Ellisland, shortly after the birth of her child. On 
that occasion, he went forward and looked into the 
cradle, which his daughter was rocking, and on see- 
ing two infants in it, he said in amazement — " I 
didna ken Jean, that you had twins again," and 
gently smiling, she simply replied, — "Neither I 
have faither, the ither bairn belongs to a friend, and 
I'm takin' care of it." 

No doubt, amid all the community of feeling and 
loving sympathy and companionship which existed 
between her and her distinguished husband, there 
must have been frequent occasions, when his moods 
and thoughts soared far beyond her simple, practical 
ken, but on these occasions she always had the tact 
and delicacy to respect her husband's abstraction, 
and to wait the result in the truest spirit of conjugal 
love and confidence. We have good evidence of 
this, in her account of the composition of his im- 
mortal poem, Tarn o' Slianter, in the end of the 
autumn of 1790. The poem was the work of one 
day, and she well remembered the circumstances. 



BONNIE JEAN. 39 

Burns spent the most of the day on his favorite walk 
by the river, where in the afternoon she joined him 
with her two children. He was busily " croonin to 
himseiy' and perceiving that her presence was an in- 
terruption, she loitered behind with her little ones 
among the broom. Her attention was presently 
attracted by the wild gestures of the Bard, who, now 
at some distance was reciting aloud with tears of 
laughter rolling down his cheeks, some of the ani- 
mated verses he had just conceived. Immediately 
afterwards the poem was committed to writing, on 
the top of a sod-dyke, at the water side, and when 
Burns came into the house, shortly afterwards, he 
read the verses in high " triumph to his wife, at the 
fireside." We have another similar instance occur- 
ring about the same period, the narrative being also 
taken from Mrs. Burns' own statement. "Burns 
though labouring under cold, spent the day in the 
usual work of the harvest, and apparently in excel- 
lent spirits, but as the twilight deepened he appeared 
to grow very sad, and at length wandered out into 
the barn-yard, to which his wife, in her anxiety, 
followed him, entreating him in vain to observe that 
frost had set in, and to return to the fireside. On 
being again and again urged, he promised com- 
pliance, but still remained where he was, striding up 
and down slowly, and contemplating the sky, which 
was singularly clear and starry. At last, Mrs. Burns 
found him stretched on a heap of straw, with his 
eyes fixed on a beautiful planet, that shone ' like 
another moon,' and pervailed on him to come in. 
He immediately, on entering the house, called for 
his desk, and wrote exactly as it now stands, with all 
the ease of one copying from memory, the sublime 
and pathetic To Mary in Heaven. 

The displenishing sale at Ellisland proved a very 



4 o BONNIE JEAN. 

favourable one, and according to Mrs. Burns' state- 
ment they entered on their Dumfries experience with 
a substantial sum in hand. Burns, besides, was 
earning an annual salary of from £70 to ^90, so 
that they had what in those days, under Mrs. Burns' 
careful and frugal management, might be regarded 
as a fair provision for their station in life. The 
dwelling they occupied, when they first came to 
Dumfries, was the the second flat of a house in the 
"WeeVennel," now called Burns Street, in which 
within the brief space of five years, the distinguished 
Poet was doomed to breath his last. This house 
consisted of two floors, and contained — a kitchen, 
parlor, and two good bed-rooms, with several lesser 
apartments. The change from rural life at Ellisland, 
to town life in Dumfries, must have been as un- 
pleasant for Mrs. Burns as it was great, but she was 
endowed with that placidity of temper, and unvary- 
ing sweetness of disposition, which enabled her at 
times to make the best of even the most unfavorable 
circumstances — " Cribbed, cabined and confined" 
in the little county town, she no doubt thought 
often and longingly of their rural home at Ellisland, 
and the comparative freedom and comfort of their 
life there, with her household and dairy duties to in- 
terest her, and sweet periods of relaxation, as she 
strolled with her husband and children among the 
broom on the romantic banks of the Nith. These 
retrospections, however, did not prevent her from 
ministering with all her love and devotion to the 
comfort and well-being of her husband and family. 
To Burns, on the other hand, there is scarcely 
room to doubt that the change of residence was a 
pleasing and congenial one. He dearly loved the 
companionship of his fellows, and the society in and 
around Dumfries afforded him many opportunities 



BONNIE JEAN. 41 

of gratifying those social tendences, which bulked 
so largely in his disposition. Much has been said as 
to his excesses during his residence in Dumfries, but 
it is now well understood that these have been 
greatly exaggerated, and we know that even at the 
worst they were never habitual in their character, 
nor did they interfere either with his capabilites as a 
business man, or with the proper discharge of his 
duty to his family. On the authority of an emphatic 
statement made" by Mrs. Burns to her sister-in-law, 
Mrs. Begg, after the Poet's death, we learn that 
during the whole time of their residence in Dumfries 
" Burns never indulged, unless when he was in con- 
genial company, and that although he was often out 
at convival meetings until a late hour, he never on a 
single occasion, however late he might be of coming 
home, failed in a custom he invariably observed be- 
fore coming to bed, of going into the room where 
his children slept, and satisfying himself that they 
were all comfortably tucked in and sleeping 
soundly. " 

Burns' daily life in Dumfries must have been an 
active and busy one, for, besides his official duties, 
he was engaged, down almost ta the very date of his 
death, in corresponding with Thomson in regard to 
the collection of Scottish songs, which Thomson 
was then editing, and in composing these matchless 
lyrics which have added so much lustre and fascina- 
tion to our Scottish Minstrelsy. Burns' favourite 
walk at Dumfries was towards the Martingdon Ford, 
and here, according to Mrs. Burns, he composed 
many of his finest songs ; and so soon as she heard 
him begin to "hum" to himself, she knew that he 
had something on his mind, and she was quite pre- 
pared to see him snatch up his hat, and set silently 
off for his favourite musing ground. The calls, too, 



42 BONNIE JEAX. 

on Burns' leisure hours were many and incessant, 
for besides associating continually with many 
families of position in and around Dumfries, his 
company was much in demand by many strangers of 
culture and eminence, who chanced to visit the 
district. 

In the management of her domestic affairs, and in 
her intercourse with her husband's many friends and 
associates, Mrs. Burns continued to display, at 
Dumfries, the same prudence and unvarying, amia- 
bility which had characterized her at Ellisland, and 
six brief years passed over the heads of the house- 
hold — six years of much comfort and happiness, 
although not unmingled too with trial and bereave- 
ment. About a year after their removal from Ellis- 
land, Mrs. Burns gave birth to a daughter, named 
Elizabeth Riddell, after Burns' fair friend Mrs. 
Riddell, of Friars Carse, and about two years after- 
wards, she had a son, called James Glencairn in 
compliment to Burns' noble patron, the Earl of that 
name. About the time of this last mentioned birth, 
Burns and his wife had the grief to notice that their 
little girl was beginning to pine away, and after a 
protracted illness of more than a year, she died at 
Mauchline, where she had been sent in the hope of 
her health being improved by the change. Both of 
them were devotedly attached to their little daughter. 
Burns in particular was bound up in her, and one of 
the pleasing revelations we have of the Poet, is that 
handed down to us in the reminiscences of a native 
of Dumfries, who saw him often "sitting in the 
summer evenings at his door with this little child in 
his arms, dandling her, and singing to her, and try- 
ing to elicit her mental faculties." 

The death occurred in the autumn of 1795, and 
the blow was intensified by the fact that Burns' own 



BONNIE JEAN. 43 

health had become so undermined that he was 
actually unable to go to Mauchline to see her in- 
terred. He was now frequently laid aside by pro- 
tracted and severe illnesses, and in the following 
year Mrs. Burns had the anguish to notice her dis- 
tinguished husband's health becoming gradually 
more and more shattered. Every remedy which her 
love and devotion could suggest was tried, and at 
times there appeared to be some slight symptom of 
improvement, but it proved to be only temporary in 
its character. For six sad weary months this con- 
tinued, amid fluctuating hopefulness and disappoint- 
ment, Mrs. Burns being much assisted in soothing 
and nursing her dying husband, by their amiable 
and warmly attached young friend Jessie Lewars: 

"Sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, 
And soft as their parting tear. ' ' 

As a last resource Burns was induced in the month 
of July to go to Brow, a hamlet on the Solway Firth, 
to try the effect of sea-bathing, but as Mrs. Burns 
was again approaching confinement, she was unable 
to accompany him. After ten days spent at Brow, 
although decidedly benefited by the change, Burns 
was seized by a restless longing to return home. As 
stated in his own words — "he anxiously wished to 
return to town, as he has not heard any news of 
Mrs. Burns these two days." He accordingly re- 
turned to Dumfries, on Monday, 18th July, and by 
his exposure during the long drive, an excess of 
fever had set in, and on reaching his home he was 
so weak as to be unable to stand upright. Weak 
and ill as he was, he nevertheless contrived to pen 
the following frantic appeal addressed to his father- 
in-law, Mr. Armour, an appeal which, sad to say, 
formed the last scrap of writing that was ever to 
emanate from Burns' powerful and prolific pen : — 



44 BONNIE JEAN. 

" Dumfries, Monday, 18th July, 1796. 
My Dear Sir: 

Do, for Heaven's sake, send Mrs. 
Armour here immediately. My wife is hourly ex- 
pecting to be put to bed. Good God ! what a situa- 
tion for her to be in, poor girl, without a friend ! I 
returned from sea-bathing quarters to-day, and my 
medical friends would almost persuade me that I am 
better but I think and feel that my strength is so 
gone that the disorder will prove fatal to me. 

Your Son-in-law, R. B." 

There is a deep, although melancholy satisfaction 
in thinking that this expiring effort of the mighty 
genius was actuated by his tender anxiety for Nhis 
loving and devoted wife, and this feeling is intensi- 
fied when we learn from Mrs. Burns' own statement 
that during his death agony, which set in very* 
shortly after his arrival at his own house, he be- 
sought her to recall him to himself by touching him 
whenever she saw symtoms of his mind wandering 
What an amount of deep, solemn, heart filling grati- 
fication there is in the thought that the loving gentle 
touch of ' k his Jean " was the last sensation of which 
the dying Poet carried with him into the Realms of 
Eternity ! 

Burns' death occurred on the morning of Thursday, 
21st July, 1796, and the interment took place on the 
Monday following, and on the same day his bereaved 
widow gave birth to a son, Maxwell Burns, who was 
ushered into this world while the bells of the 
churches were tolling his Father's funeral knell, 
and who survived his father barely three years. 

Mrs. Burns survived her husband for fully thirty- 
eight years, and during the whole of that period she 
continued to occupy the house in which his life had 






BONNIE JEAN. 45 

so sadly and prematurely closed. Her existence al- 
though lonely, was far from being' devoid of comfort 
and happiness. By the generous liberality of many 
of the admirers of her husband's genius, and by the 
proceeds realized from Dr. Currie's posthumous 
edition of the Poet's "Life and Works", her worldly 
comfort was amply provided for. Throughout her 
lengthened widowhood, she was regarded with 
general and genuine respect, not only on account of 
her association with the gifted Bard, but also on 
account of her own amiability of character: inherent 
good taste; and unvarying modesty of deportment. 
For the memory of Burns she had an intense 
veneration, and she fondly cherished, to the very 
last, her every reminiscence of the brief but happy 
wedded life they had spent together. With all the 
loving tenderness of her single-hearted nature, she 
clung to the house in which he had lived and died, 
and although at the time she became a widow she 
was still an attractive, and comparatively speaking, 
a young woman, she refused to enter into a second 
marriage, although she had more than once an 
opportunity of doing so, decidedly to her wordly 
advantage. She devoted herself to the up-bringing 
and education of her children, refusing, firmly yet 
gratefully, in the hour of her greatest necessity, the 
offer of a generous kinsman of her husband, to re- 
lieve her of the maintenance and education of her 
eldest boy. As an instance too of her unselfish 
generosity, she refused to allow her brother-in-law, 
Gilbert Burns, to cast himself, and his mother and 
sisters on the world, by displenishing his farm, as he 
proposed to do, in order to pay up a debt of ^"180 
which he owed to Robert, and which he knew was 
urgently required to provide for the wants of his 
brother's widow and children. Nor did her self- 



46 BONNIE JEAN. 

sacrificing devotion to her fatherless family go un- 
rewarded. It is true that her son, Maxwell, died 
three years after her husband, at the age of three, 
and four years thereafter, death also deprived her of 
her son, Francis Wallace, in his fourteenth year, but 
her eldest son Robert, gained for himself a good 
position in the civil service, while her other two sons, 
William and James, attained to distinguished military 
rank, and ultimately retired as Lieutenant-Colonels 
in the East India Company's Service. All of them 
survived their mother for many years, but owing to 
William and James being abroad, Robert, the eldest 
son, was the only one who was privileged to witness 
the closing scenes of their mother's life. We have 
a touching and pathetic account of the death of 
Mrs. Burns, furnished by her grand-daughter Sarah 
Burns, now Mrs. Hutchinson, residing in Cheltenham, 
the eldest daughter of Colonel James Glencairn 
Burns. Mrs. Hutchinson, after the death of her 
mother, in India, in 182 1, was sent to this country 
and consigned to the care of her grand-mother, by 
whom she was tenderly and affectionate^ nutrured, 
until death deprived her of her kind and venerable 
guardian, in 1834. At that time Sarah was a mere 
child of twelve, but she still retains, after a lapse of 
more than half a century, a warm and fond recollec- 
tion of her grand-mother. Being a day boarder at 
a school at Dumfries, she saw little of her except 
for an hour or two in the evening, owing to Mrs. 
Burns being so disabled by paralysis, as to be un- 
able to walk down stairs from her bed-room. Mrs. 
Hutchinson says: "On Saturday afternoons when I 
was home from school she used to give me pennies 
to take round to some of her poor old neighbours, 
and I remember the beggars who came to the door 
always got meal to put into their 'pokes.' I can 



BONNIE JEAN. 47 

only remember her kindness to me. I used to read 
a chapter to her out of the family Bible, and I can 
vividly remember seeing her, after her last seizure, 
lying speechless with her eyes closed. After our 
minister, Dr. Wallace prayed, she opened her eyes 
and looked round the room for me, and as I went 
beside her the tears coursed down her cheeks, and I 
think she pressed my hand, but she never spoke 
again." How thoroughly Jean's tender womanly 
heart w T ent out towards the little motherless grand- 
daughter, who had been sent to brighten the closing 
years of her life, is evidenced by the fact that she 
expressly stipulated that her foster-daughter " Betty 
Burns " should name her youngest daughter 
" Sarah " after this idol of her old age. This touch- 
ing fact is disclosed in a letter, wmich "Betty'' 
wrote to her aunt Mrs. Begg, twelve years after her 
foster-mother's death, from which we cannot refrain 
from making the following quotation, as it affords 
the truest and most touching and genuine tribute 
that was ever paid to a good and generous hearted 
woman: "The names of the last two children, 
[Sarah Burns and James BurnsJ, were all that Mrs. 
Burns exacted from me as an acknowledgement of 
her unwearied kindness to me. God was kind to 
her, my dear aunt, in giving her plenty but she did 
not hide it under a hedge: she willingly shared it 
with the poor and needy. The last letter I had 
from her was in July 1833, with £2 in it to buy a 
frock for my youngest child, then about a month 
old. The more I contemplate that excellent 
woman's character, the more I admire it. There 
was something good and charitable about her, sur- 
passing all women I ever yet met with. She was 
indeed a true friend, and the best of mothers to me, 
and I was often ready to think that all friendship for 



4 8 BONNIE JEAN. 

me in the family had gone with her, but I am glad 
to find it otherwise." 

Mrs. Burns' death took plaee on Wednesday, 26th 
March, 1834, shortly before midnight. She was 
then in the 70th year of her age, and of this length- 
ened period, she had spent not less than forty-four 
years in the town of Dumfries. As illustrating the 
pleasing memories she left behind her there, we ex- 
tract the following passages from a chaste tribute to 
her, which appeared in the Dumfries Courier, of Ap- 
ril 2, 1834, and which emanated from the pen of the 
late Mr. M'Diarmind, an intimate personal friend of 
Mrs. Burns, during the later period of her life: 

"For more than 30 years, she was visited by thou- 
sands and thousands of persons, from the peer, down 
to the itinerant sonneteer — the latter, a class of per- 
sons to whom she never refused an audience or dis- 
missed unrewarded. Occasionally during the sum- 
mer months, she was a good deal annoyed, but she 
bore all in patience, and although naturally fond of 
quiet, seemed to consider her house as open to vis- 
itors, and its mistress, in some degree, the property 
of the public; but the attentions of strangers neither 
turned her head, nor were ever alluded to in the 
spirit of boasting. * * 

"Hers, in short, was one of those well balanced 
minds, that, cling instinctively to propriety, and a 
medium in all things. Such as knew the deceased 
earliest and latest, were unconscious of any change 
in her demeanour and habits, except perhaps, greater 
attention to dress and more refinement in manner, 
insensibly acquired by frequent intercourse with 
families of the first respectability. In her tastes, 
she was frugal and simple, and delighted in music, 
pictures and flowers. In spring and summer, it was 
impossible to pass her windows, without being struck 



BONNIE JEAN. 49 

by the beauty of the floral treasures they contained, 
and if extravagant in any way, it was in the article 
of roots and plants of the finest sorts. Fond of the 
society of young people, she mixed as long as able 
in their innocent pleasures, and cheerfully filled for 
them "the cup which cheers, but not inebriates." 
Although neither a sentimentalist, nor a blue stock- 
ing, she was a clever woman, possessed of great 
shrewdness, discriminating character admirably, 
and frequently made very pithy remarks, * * 
* * * When young, she must have 

been a handsome, comely woman, if not indeed a 
beauty, and up to middle life, her jet black eyes, 
were clear and sparkling. Her carriage was easy, 
and her step light. In ballad poetry her taste was 
good, and range of reading rather extensive. Her 
memory too was strong, and she could quote, when 
she chose, at considerable length and with great 
aptitude. Of these powers, the bard was so well 
aware that he read to her almost every piece he 
composed, and was not ashamed to own that he had 
profited by her judgement." 



5 o BONNIE JEAN. 

BONNIE JEAN. 

Hunter MacCulloch. 
Author of "Robert Burns; A Centenary Ode." 



(Air : Afton Water.) 
When Scotia's ain song-bird, in life's leesome spring, 
Flew 'round the braw birdies on bold, dashing wing, 
An' whissled sae sweetly wi' sic winsome art, 
They lookit an' listened an' tint was each heart. 
There were Peggies an' Nannies an' Tibbies an' 

Nell, 
Wha ower Rab the Ranter in turn cast a spell ; 
Till the lowe o' true love, lit by sparklin' black een, 
Bleezed up in his heart for his ae Bonnie Jean! 

The stone-mason's lass was for lovin' designed, 
Sae han'some her features, sae wholesome her mind; 
In sweet-tempered Jean, wi' her kintra-bred life, 
Scotia's ain darling bard fand his guid-willie wife. 
An' weel for our Robin 'twas Jean that he wed, 
Whase treasures were mair o' the heart than the 

head. 
She lo'ed an' forgie'd him frae dawin till e'en ; 
Nae bird o' them a' could hae matched Bonnie Jean! 

As his ain dearest jo, Bonnie Jean was his choice; 
She charmed wi' her figure, her face an' her voice. 
As a wife o' his ain, weel deserved she his rhyme, 
Fu' worthy the happiest made "fireside clime." 
She teaches her fatherless bairns, as she mourns, 
To revere Scotia's chiefest o' bards, Robert Burns ; 
Whase memory she cherished till death closed 

her een; 
Faithfu' maid, wife an' widow, all praise ! 

Bonnie Jean ! 



BONNIE JEAN. 51 

BONNIE JEAN IN EDINBURGH. 

By Archibald Munro. 



Reprinted from The Scotsman, January 23, 1894. 

There have been many Bonnie Jeans, and it as 
safe to predict as it is pleasant to foresee that there 
will be many more ; but there is only one on whom 
fortune has bestowed special distinction. All the 
others must be content to occupy a position subor- 
dinate to that of the one to whom the poetic genius 
of Robert Burns has procured a conspicuous niche in 
the Temple of Fame. A few general remarks on 
this celebrated heroine, and especially a brief ac- 
count of her visit to Edinburgh, may not, perhaps, 
be out of place at a time when the minds of many 
people are being engaged with thoughts about an 
occasion when "a blast o' Januar' win' blew hansel 
in on Robin." 

Though unhappily unacquainted with the advan- 
tages of the education which the enlightened con- 
science of the nation had provided for even the 
humblest ranks of the people, this excellent woman 
divined from attentive observation the benefits it 
confers on its fortunate possessors. No one was 
more anxious, therefore, to encourage a proposal to 
offer her eldest son a course of studies at a grammar 
school, and even at a university, notwithstanding 
her husband's satirical opinion of folk who enter 
college classes. Great was her satisfaction on hear- 
ing now and then from Robert Secundus accounts 
of his two years' experience at the Edinburgh Uni- 
versity, as well as of his interviews with the nota- 
bilities who fraternised with his father in other days. 

Brought up in the atmosphere of a district that 



52 BONNIE JEAN. 

produced the worthies immortalized in the "Cottar's 
Saturday Night," and nurtured under the roof of a 
parent whose practice of the code of morality was 
never disputed, Mrs. Burns was thoroughly con- 
versant with the ideas and duties that appertain to 
the highest interests of humanity. To her family, 
and to her husband also, she set an example of piety 
by the observance of those sacred ordinances that 
have given the Scottish peasantry an enviable no- 
toriety among the nations of the earth. During her 
long widowhood of thirty-eight years she had the 
sole charge of the up-bringing of her sons in the 
way in which they should go, and right royally did 
she face and discharge the responsibilities of her ex- 
acting position. The late Rev. Dr. Begg, who in 
early youth was pastor of one of the Dumfries par- 
ish churches, had Mrs. Burns for one of his hearers, 
and he used to dwell with great complacency on the 
regularity of her attendance on his ministrations, 
and on the fortunate coincidence that led to his ac- 
quaintance with the wife of one whom, in my own 
hearing, he placed, in regard to greatness, above 
all other Scotsmen, not excepting Bruce, Knox, 
Scott, or even Chalmers. Dr. Begg humorously re- 
lated that while, in the course of his pastoral visits 
to the widow's house, he was more eager to hear her 
talk about her great husband than to discharge the 
duty of the visiting pastor, she was prone to reverse 
the order of things, and to confine the ecclesiastic to 
his properly official track. While he wanted remin- 
iscences of Burns, his douce parishioner was fain to 
crack about the Kirk. On the termination of the 
young preacher's connection with his Dumfries con- 
gregation no member of his flock tendered a more 
feeling regret than the shrewd and warm-hearted 
relict of Robert Burns. 



BONNIE JEAN. 53 

During- her prolonged widowhood, Mrs. Burns 
continued to occupy the comparatively humble, but 
much frequented, house in which she had passed 
little more than a couple of the years of her married 
life. Pleased with her home, herself, and all the 
world besides she ne'er had changed nor wished to 
change her place, though often solicited by friends 
and relations at distance to enliven the monotony of 
her way of life by excursions hither and thither, or 
by a while's residence among them. Strange, to 
say, however, the lonely matron, when far advanced 
in years, yielded to the solicitations of friends to 
whom she was allied by no tie of blood. Some folk 
in Edinburgh, who had proved her most generous 
friends in the hour of her utmost need, expressed a 
wish that the consort of the boon companion who 
during his even brief sojourn among them had given 
their social life an interest unfelt before, and who, if 
it be true, as Walt Whitman opines, that the great- 
est city is that where the greatest man is found, 
made Edinburgh the capital of the country in a new 
sense, would enrich its associations by her presence 
among them. Entreaties from such a quarter and 
from such petitioners overbore Bonnie Jean's re- 
luctance to leave the Queen of the South even for a 
day. Jean's visit to Edinburgh ought to be of con- 
siderable interest to all the readers of her husband's 
biography, all the more so, perhaps, that its particu- 
lars form no part of her recorded history. In the 
course of her journey towards the metropolis she 
had to pass a day or two at Mauchline, where she 
had an opportunity of seeing some of her own and 
her husband's now famous companions and acquaint- 
ances. James Humphreys, the noisy polemic of 
the village, rival of Burns himself in point of re- 
partee, and the subject of possibly the severest epi- 



54 BONNIE JEAN. 

gram the poet ever put on paper; and John Lees, 
Burns' blackfoot at the Castle of Montgomery on 
the occasion of his visits to Highland Mary, and 
other cronies of scarcely less note in the poet's 
annals, waited on the illustrious visitor, and reviewed 
with her the characteristic scenes of many a social 
hour. All the Mauchline belles, of whom Jean 
herself was, as has been mentioned, the favourite of 
her husband's muse, were still in life, and, indeed, 
lived to a good old age — three of them being alive in 
the year 185 1, a longevity which those who seek for 
causes to effects may be inclined to ascribe to the 
good humor infused into its possessors by the 
sprightly poetical compliments paid to them during 
their teens. Several of these "belles'' were visited 
by the quondam Miss Armour as she proceeded to 
Edinburgh, and exchanged reminiscences with her 
of the happy era when they sat for the portraits 
which a master hand made of them respectively. 
To very few outsiders, however, were the interest- 
ing pilgrim's arrival and departure at and from the 
different localities through which she passed made 
known. This circumstance was in quite accordance 
with her own urgent request. This pre-arrangement 
was, as may be readily conjectured, a sore disappoint- 
ment to many an admirer of her celebrated spouse. 
Mrs. Burns' arrival in Edinburgh was soon made 
known to those family circles in which Burns may 
be said to have for several months lived, moved, and 
had his being. Mr. George Thomson, who had 
been the means of waking to new exertions the dor- 
mant muse of the national bard, and who had 
received, through correspondence, the first copies of 
those lyric gems on which the reputation of the 
author as a song writer chiefly rests, resided at the 
time of Mrs. Burns' visit in a tenement in the High 



BONNIE JEAN. 55 

Street, adjoining the Exchange Square, and in the 
immediate vicinity of a room where Hugh Miller 
did editorial work for The Witness. The spot is 
therefore, as well as for more ancient considerations, 
time-honoured, and even classical. Mr. Thomson 
was among the most eager of the Edinburgh friends 
to see Bonnie Jean among them, and he coupled his 
request of a visit from her with a wish that she 
would make his house her home for the time being. 
With infinite delight the visitor was received by her 
host and family, the host pathetically declaring, 
after the preliminary greeting, that the greatest 
regret of his life was that circumstances stood in the 
way of his arranged meeting with her husband. Mr. 
Thomson frequently repeated the expression of this 
feeling in the course of his interviews with more 
recent relatives of the poet. One of the Mauchline 
belles, described by Burns as " Miss Smith, she has 
wit," in his lines on these heroines, was then resident 
in Nicolson Street, and was soon advised of the 
arrival of her fellow celebrity. At a later period 
this lady lived in South Charlotte Street, in the 
house of her distinguished son, the late Principal 
Candlish, and was, even in advanced life, as lively, 
cheerful, and witty as ever. In the year 1846 I had 
the pleasure of making the acquaintance of this 
great favorite of Burns, and drew from her society 
a new, and I hope instructive, interest in the peerless 
productions of her felicitous eulogist. Mrs. Candlish, 
who lost no time in calling on the companion of her 
girlhood, told her much of her own experience since 
1785, when they were the toasts respectively of 
Robert Burns and James Candlish, and by her 
general knowledge and proverbial gifts, mightily in- 
terested Jean with her racy remarks on folk and 
fashions in Auld Reekie. Clarinda, too, the poet's 



56 BONNIE JEAN. 

sometime goddess of the Potterrow, called and en- 
chanted her adorer's widow with her well-known 
fund of lore and charming powers of gossip to such 
an extent that Bonnie Jean, by nature free from all 
taint of envy or jealousy, became as much impressed 
by her worth and sensibility as ever the impression- 
able poet himself had been, and facetiously pro- 
nounced herself fortunate in possessing charms that 
in the end triumphed over those of her talented and 
pretty rival. How happy Robin was with either 
when t' other was away! Other friends who had 
visited Mrs. Burns in her home at Dumfries, and 
still more who had not, came trooping to Mr. 
Thomson's house to pay their respects, but did not 
content themselves with leaving their cards. There 
were daily levees of such friends as had known her 
husband, or had interested themselves at his death, 
in behalf of his widow and his little boys. Mr. 
Robert Ainslie, W. S. , the poet's companion during 
his romantic excursions to the Border Counties, and 
the witness of interesting revelations of his char- 
acter, tender, douce, or gay; Dawnie Douglas, of 
the Anchor Hotel, a howff which stood where the 
Scotsman Office now stands, and where the 
Crochallan Club was instituted, and, more note- 
worthy still, where Burns and his Edinburgh chums 
had many a merry splore — these and other associ- 
ates of the poet did themselves the honour of wel- 
coming Bonnie Jean to "Scotia's darling seat." A 
meeting between Mr. Walter Scott and Mrs Burns, 
which, however, did not take place at Mr. Thomson's 
house, was, probably, the one which all the students 
of whatever is brillant and permanent in the poetry 
and history of Scotland, must consider as the most 
interesting episode in Mrs. Burns' visit to the Great 
Wizard's "own romantic town." The matchless 



BONNIE JEAN. 57 

novelist, who, when a boy, met Burns in Sheens 
House in circumstances which have engaged the 
pens of poets, and have lately occupied the thoughts 
and skill of one of our rising young painters, ex- 
tended to Bonnie Jean a hand trembling all over 
with the emotions of tender memories. The inter- 
view was a protracted and affectionate one, the 
characteristics of the one friend most impressively 
affecting the mind and the heart of the other. Un- 
fortunately for the interests of historical literature, 
Mrs. Burns' excessive modesty prevented her from 
letting the world know that part of the Wizard's 
remarks that related to the elder and more gifted 
son of the muse. 

The catalogue of visitors would have been very 
incomplete indeed if it omitted the name of Mr. 
Alexander Cunningham, W. S., as generous a bene- 
factor as ever relieved or cheered a bereaved familv. 
This gentleman's worth and liberality has been re- 
flected in fadeless characters in letters written to 
him by Burns. Almost the last letter the trembl- 
ing hand of the dying poet penned was written to 
this, his best Edinburgh friend, and it ought to be 
a source of unmingled gratification to all sticklers 
for the fitness of things that the grandson of the 
Writer to the Signet, who bears his surname, has 
possession of the precious documents, and that very 
tempting offers have failed to induce him to part 
with them. They are, in truth, above price. 

To what extent Mrs. Burns and her orphan family 
were indebted to Mr. Cunningham's zeal and muni- 
ficence she and many others were well aware, and 
her grateful feelings found expression in the gift of 
probably the costliest relic of her immortal husband. 
A punchbowl of fine stone, made and presented by 
her father to the poet at the time of their happy re- 



5 8 BONNIE JEAN. 

conciliation, was an article the daughter of the one 
and the wife of the other thought would be accept- 
able to the congenial associate of her husband. The 
punchbowl in after days fetched 300 guineas at a 
sale, and was, like Scotland's coronation stone, 
packed off to London to enrich the British Museum. 
Extravagant or at least sensational offers for the re- 
purchase and recall of the precious memorial have 
not succeeded in restoring it to the Cunningham 
family. Had Mrs. Burns received no other kindness 
in Edinburgh beyond what she received at the 
residence of Mr. Cunningham, she was ready to de- 
clare that her husband had better friends than she 
gave him credit for, or than he even deserved. 

Small parties were now and then formed in Mr. 
Thomson's house in honor of his guest. To these 
social gatherings scarcely any but the lovers of music 
and song were invited. Mr. Thomson, who was 
fellow-labourer with Burns in the composition of 
the work on Scottish melodies, was an accomplished 
violinist, and had taken his share in the entertain- 
ment of his company by discoursing excellent music 
on that instrument, with which he had been wont to 
charm the musical reunions of Cecilia's Hall at the 
foot of Niddry Street in the days of Schetki, Corelli, 
and Giornovichi, the Paganini of the period. The 
attention and hospitality of her host overcame any 
hesitation Mrs. Burns might have to exhibit her 
musical gifts in high Edinburgh society. Though 
the range of her gamut was not equal to what it had 
been, nor the tone so sympathetic as when her en- 
raptured husband was the happiest of her audience, 
the romance of the occasion supplied what was 
awanting to the vocal spell. Some, indeed, declared 
that her acceptance as a singer needed no extrinsic 
consideration to commend it. Those songs that had 



BONNIE JEAN. 59 

been inspired by herself, and which after some 
gentle pressure she consented to sing, were listened 
to with an interest that could never again be revived 
in Edinburgh. 

With all Mr. Thomson's admiration and study of 
the magnificent foreign musical compositions that 
were slowly working their way to British favour, he 
had a laudable predilection for Scottish lyrics, and 
no less a fancy for dance music. This was more in 
Jean's way. As a variation in the evening's enjoy- 
ments, a strathspey and reel occasionally followed 
the abstract attractions of choral harmonies. The 
younger members of the company generally mon- 
opolised the dancing accommodation of Mr. Thom- 
son's limited apartments, and tripped it merrily to 
his cheery strains. Bonnie Jean, who seems to have 
been considered by all present too matronly to care 
for the fantastic mazes of her girlhood, was allowed 
to look on as a passive, perhaps a reluctant, specta- 
tor. At the close of a rattling reel one of the per- 
spiring gymnasts advanced to Jean's chair, and 
jocularly remarked — " I suppose Mrs. Burns your 
dancing days are over?" "More than you seem to 
think so," roguishly responded the prima donna of 
old Mauchline penny reel days. "I have not seen 
you on the floor," gasped the embarrassed joker. 
"That's no fault of mine," replied the dame of 
nearly threescore summers. ' ' Do you mean to say 
you would try a spring, Mrs. Burns?" "Ay, a 
dozen of them, gin I got the chance." Judge of 
the surprise and the delight of the company, includ- 
ing the fiddler and his wife, when they saw the ven- 
erable belle in her celebrated role stand up beside 
an ecstatic partner. Bonnie Jean's feet had lost 
none of their cunning. She set, she cleeked, and 
whirled about with a grace and agility that would 



60 BONNIE JEAN. 

have added new laurels to the fame of the beldame, 
whose gyrations in Auld Alloway Kirk enriched the 
een of Tarn o' Shanter. Of course, every gallant 
present claimed Jean as his partner in the next 
dance. So thoroughly did the veteran danseuse 
enter into the spirit of the moment, and compel her 
fellow-dancers to bestir themselves, that not a few 
of them were right happy when the fiddler drew the 
last run of his bow. Bonnie Jean sat down smiling, 
and gaily hinted that she was ready to play a similar 
part in every subsequent night of her stay in her 
host's abode. 

A visit to the theatre was proposed by Mr. Thom- 
son, and cheerfully accepted by his light-hearted 
guest. At that time the theatre — the only one in 
the city — included in its orchestra a Mr. Fraser, who 
had acquired high reputation as a performer on the 
hautboy. As Fraser had played in the same house 
in the presence of Robert Burns himself some of 
the melodies that are married to his immortal verse, 
Mr. Thomson intimated to the popular musician 
that the widow of the poet was going to honour the 
playhouse with her patronage, and that it would be 
an appropriate compliment to her if on the occasion 
he would render one or more of those melodies that 
had delighted her husband in a former century. 
Fraser required no further suggestion ; he was but 
too willing to honour himself by granting the favor 
asked. The air played was that of Burns' song, 
" Fee him, father, fee him," which as rendered by 
Fraser, in opposition to the popular interpretation of 
its sentiment, was not of a sprightly cast, but the 
echo of deep despair. The performer had been 
accustomed to treat the habitues of the theatre to 
this air, especially on his benefit nights; but as a 
special interest attached to the present occasion, he 



BONNIE JEAN. 61 

played with, if possible, more care and discrimina- 
tion than ever. His pathetic notes drew tears from 
many eyes, even from those not usually given to the 
melting mood. To many individuals it appeared 
as if the performer brought Jean into the immediate 
presence of the spirit of her loving husband. It 
need hardly be added that she herself seemed to 
have been of the same opinion. 

To Jean this pathetic song was charged with 
touching memories, of which neither Mr. Fraser 
nor any one of the crowded audience that listened to 
him had at that time any knowledge. Even Mr. 
Thomson was ignorant of their existence. The 
readers of the biographies of Burns may recollect 
that at a very dark period of the author's relation to 
Jean and her family he offered to become a toiler in 
her father's service, and remain in it till he discharged 
certain responsibilities supposed to be resting upon 
him. The song was, therefore, fitted, probably in- 
tended, to express the daughter's anxiety that her 
father should "fee" her lover in order, of course, 
that she might have more frequent opportunities of 
seeing him. 

A round of other and various entertainments 
gladdened the heart of the stranger during her 
limited stay in the capital. On the eve of her with- 
drawal from Edinburgh, Mrs. Burns was honoured 
by her old and new friends with demonstrations of 
esteem and affection which even a Queen might con- 
sider herself fortunate in receiving from loyal and 
devoted subjects. On her return to Dumfries the 
much-longed-for lady was cordially welcomed back 
by all who knew her. Prominent among those who 
yearned for her return was Mrs. James Thomson, 
the Jessy Lewars of earlier days, and the subject of 
that imperishable beauty of verse and song, " O, 



62 BONNIE JEAN. 

wert thou in the cauld blast," the jointi inspira- 
tion of Burns and Mendelssohn. To Mrs. Thomson 
there was sent by the hands of Mrs. Burns a mes- 
sage of esteem and gratitude from, among other 
friends, Sir Walter Scott, which might be regarded 
as a precious prelude to a more popular compliment 
paid to her on a later day. Some of us who took a 
part in the famous Burns Festival held at Ayr in 
1844 may remember the tumultous and prolonged 
applause that followed the mention by the Earl of 
Edinburgh in the banqueting pavilion near Alloway 
Kirk, of the services rendered by this the patient 
and devoted nurse of Burns during his last illness. 
On her return home, therefore, Mrs. Burns received 
from Mrs. Thomson more than a common welcome. 
Jean delighted to narrate, and Jessy delighted to 
hear of, the affectionate regard in which the deceased 
husband and friend was held in high quarters in the 
metropolis and elsewhere. 



BONNIE JEAN. 63 

OF A' THE AIRTS." 



By The Rev. Arthur John Lockhart. 



Author of " The Masque of Minstrels" etc. 

There's a blur on the face of the late March moon ; 

The wind pipes shrill, and the chimneys croon ; 

Over our cottage it searching flies, 

And every crack and cranny it tries ; 

From its wrestling might the elm springs free, 

And it wings a wail from the willow tree. 

But the wind of March, as I sit by the fire, 

Plays through the heart's aeolian lyre, 

And to my listening spirit brings 

The past and the future on its wings ; — 

The seer can see, and the singer sing, 

When the wild March evening pipes of spring. 

Then, as the firelight darts up clear, 

And I see the guidwife sitting near, 

A sweet auld song through my mind will go, — 

''Of a' the airts the wind can blow;" 

And the sweet home face, that is smiling seen, 

Minds me right gaily of Bonnie Jean. 

Rave, ye wild blast, and thou bright fire, glow ! 

' ' Of all the airts the wind can blow, 

I dearly lo'e the wind o' the west 

For there lives the lassie that I lo'e best:" 

The heart that sings it throbs and yearns 

With some of the passion of Robert Burns. 



64 BONNIE JEAN. 

When the daisy blows, and the thrush appears, 
One face comes peering across the years ; 
'Tis the face of him who toiled and sung", 
When Jean was absent, and love was young, — 
" I see her in the flowers sae fair, 
I hear her voice as it charms the air." 

Ah, fancy quikens! I see him stand 

Alone in the field at Ellisland ; 

And all around him on every side, 

The birds are singing at Whitsuntide; 

But, though woods are green, and skies are gay, 

There's a look in his eyes that is far away. 

Then, in blissful dreaming, he moves along, 
And he utters his heart in a joyous song: 
"Wi' her in the west the wild woods grow; 
The laverocks sing, and the rivers row ; 
And. though there's mony a hill between, 
Ever my fancy is wi' my Jean. 

' ' The winds may blow — the winds may blow — 

Of a' the airts the wind can blow 

The west is ever the dearest to me, 

Till I my lassie again may see ; 

Greener the leaves, and the skies more sheen, 

That hover over my Bonnie Jean." 

She came, ere the winter, to ben an' byre ; 
She lit on the hearth her lover's fire ; 
Her smiles were like sunshine upon the walls; 
Her words dropt sweet as the streamlet-falls ; 
The lassie of song was his wedded wife, 
The heart he longed for was his for life. 



BONNIE JEAN. 65 

O fortunate season, and hopeful time, 
When the poet prospered in love and rhyme ! 
When, sowing or reaping, the day went by, 
And he ploughed his fields, and tented his kye, 
And he deemed, while the children played near his 

door, 
That peace had come to depart no more. 

O westlin' winds, full softly blow ! 
Ye bring content with your bloom or snow ; 
No more the poet's heart may roam 
From fireside glow of his own calm home : 
Would that, indeed, it had been so ; — 
Ye westlin' winds, full softly blow ! 

Ah, faithful Jean ! there were other years ! 

For her were sorrows, for her were tears : 

But the pansy weathers the wintry rime ; 

And she kept, as she might, her " fireside clime." 

She lifted her burden,— her heart was stout, 

And the lamp of her love, it never went out. 

Ah, wayward brother, and poet wild ! 

With the shifting fancy of petted child, 

And passionate spirit through dark eyes seen, — 

Thou well might'st cherish and prize thy Jean! 

Some fleeting favors the few might shed ; 

She loved thee living, and mourned thee dead. 

What lyric queens' in thy heart might reign, 
Bemoaned with passion and tender pain : 
She of the blind and the hopeless love ; 
And Mary, the sainted in Heaven above: — 
Weeping, we sing of the rose-lip paled, 
And the eyes soft glances so darkly veiled. 



66 BONNIE JEAN. 

But one there was, — to her memory peace! 
With thee she lieth in gray Dumfries ; — 
Hers were thy sorrows, successes, joys; 
She cuddled thy lassies and reared thy boys ; 
She dropped o'er thy grave her quick hot tears, 
And gave to thy memory her widowed years. 

So when assemble the gay and young, 
And songs of the Scottish land are sung, 
And before the dreamer's raptured eye 
The fair procession goes gliding by, 
Not one of the haunted troop is seen 
Dearer and truer than Bonnie Jean. 

Stately in splendor, and radiant in light, 
They thrill the ear, and they charm the sight ; 
They answer the music's melting call, — 
But one is the jewel among them all : 
Warmest, most human and gentle, appears 
The patient woman who blessed his years. 

And so, to-night, in my warm home-nest, 

While the shrill March wind blows out of the west, 

The auld sang hums through my musing brain, 

Till I utter allowed the tender strain, — 

And the guid wife sings by the firesides glow — 

"Of a' the airts the wind can blow." 



BONNIE JEAN. 67 

BURNS' BONNIE JEAN. 



From Mrs. Jameson's "Loves of the Poets" {1844). 



It was as Burns's wife as well as his early love, 
that Bonnie Jean lives immortalized in her poet's 
songs, and that her name is destined to float in music 
from pole to pole. When they first met, Burns was 
about six-and-twenty, and Jean Armour "but a 
young thing," 

Wi' iempting lips and roguish een, 

the pride, the beauty, and the favourite toast of the 
village of Mauchline, where her father lived. To 
an early period of their attachment, or to the fond 
recollection of it in after times, we owe some of 
Burns's most beautiful and impassioned song, — as 

Come, let me take thee to this breast, 
And pledge we ne'er shall sunder ! 

And I'll spurn as vilest dust 

The world's wealth and grandeur, &c. 

"O poortith cold and restless love;" "The kind love 
that's in her e'e;" "Lewis, what reck I by thee;" 
and many others. I conjecture, from a passage in 
one of Burns's letters, that Bonnie Jean also fur- 
nished the heroine and the subject of that admirable 
song, " O whistle, and I'll come to thee, my lad," so 
full of buoyant spirits and artless affection: it 
appears that she wished to have her name introduced 
into it, and that he afterwards altered the fourth 
line of the first verse to please her : — thus, 

Thy Jeanie will venture wi' ye, my lad ; 

but this amendment has been rejected by singers 



68 BONNIE JEAN. 

and editors, as injuring the musical accentuation: 
the anecdote, however, and the introduction of the 
name, give an additional interest and a truth to the 
sentiment, for which I could be content to sacrifice 
the beauty of a single line, and methinks Jeanie had 
a right to dictate in this instance. * With regard to 
her personal attractions, Jean was at this time a 
blooming girl, animated with health, affection, and 
gaiety : the perfect symmetry of her slender figure ; 
her light step in the dance; the "waist sae jimp," 
"the foot sae sma'," were no fancied beauties: — 
she had a delightful voice, and sung with much taste 
and enthusiasm the ballads of her native country; 
among which we may imagine that the songs of her 
lover were not forgotten. The consequences, how- 
ever, of all this dancing, singing, and loving were 
not quite so poetical as they were embarrassing. 

O wha could prudence think upon, 

And sic a lassie by him ? 
O wha could prudence think upon, 

And sae in love as I am ? 

Burns had long been distinguished in his rustic 
neighborhood for his talents, for his social qualities 
and his conquests among the maidens of his own 
rank. His personal appearance is thus described 
from memory by Sir Walter Scott: — " His form was 
strong and robust, his manner rustic, not clownish ; 
with a sort of dignified simplicity, which received 
part of its effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of 
his extraordinary talents; * * * his eye alone, I 
think, indicated the poetical character and tempera- 
ment; it was large, and of a dark cast, which 

* "A Dame whom the graces have attired in witchcraft, and whom 
the loves have armed with lightning— a fair one— herself the heroine of 
the song insists on the amendment— and dispute her commands if you 
dare."— Burns' Letters. 



BONNIE JEAN. 69 

glowed, (I say literally, glowed) when he spoke with 
feeling and interest . His address to females was 
extremely deferential, and always with a turn either 
to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their 
attention particularly. I have heard the late 
Duchess of Gordon remark this;" and Allan Cun- 
ningham, speaking also from recollection, says, "he 
had a very manly countenance, and a very dark 
complexion; his habitual expression was intensely 
melancholy, but at the presence of those he loved 
or esteemed, his whole face beamed with affection 
and genius ;" *** ' l his voice was very musical ; and 
he excelled in dancing, and all athletic sports which 
required strength and agility." 

It is surprising that powers of fascination which 
carried a Duchess "off her feet," should conquer 
the heart of a country lass of low degree? Bonnie 
Jean was too softhearted, or her lover too irresistible; 
and though Burns stepped forward to repair their 
transgression by a written acknowledgement of 
marriage, which, in Scotland, is sufficient to consti- 
tute a legal union, still his circumstances, and his 
character as a "wild lad," were such, that nothing 
could appease her father's indignation; and poor 
Jean, when humbled and weakened by the conse- 
quences of her fault and her sense of shame, was 
prevailed on to destroy the document of her lover's 
fidelity to his vows, and to reject him. 

Burns was nearly heart-broken by this dereliction, 
and between grief and rage was driven to the verge 
of insanity His first thought was to fly the country ; 
the only alternative which presented itself, ' ' was 
Jamaica*or a jail;" and such were the circumstances 
under which he wrote his " Lament," which, though 
not composed in his native dialect, is poured forth 



70 BONNIE JEAN. 

with all that energy and pathos which only truth 
could impart. 

No idly feigned poetic pains, 

My sad, love lorn lamenting claim ; 
No shepherd's pipe — Arcadian strains, 

No fabled tortures, quaint and tame : 
The plighted faith — the mutual flame — 

The oft-attested powers above — 
The promised father's tender name — 

These were the pledges of my love ! 

This was about 1786: two years afterwards, when 
the publication of his poems had given him name 
and fame, Burns revisited the scenes which his 
Jeanie had endeared to him: thus he sings exult- 
ingly,— 

I'll aye ca' in by yon town 
And by yon garden-green, again : 

I'll aye ca' in by yon town. 
And see my Bonnie Jean again ! 

They met in secret; a reconciliation took place; 
and the consequences were that Bonnie Jean, being 
again exposed to the indignation of her family, was 
literally turned out of her father's home. When 
the news reached Burns he was lying ill ; he was 
lame from the consequences of an accident, — the 
moment he could stir, he flew to her, went through 
the ceremony of marriage with her m presence 
of competent witnesses, and few months afterwards 
he brought her to his new farm at Ellisland, estab- 
lished her under his roof as his wife, and the 
honoured mother of his children. 

It was during this second-hand honeymoon, 
happier and more endeared than many have proved 
in their first gloss, that Burns wrote several of the 
sweetest effusions ever inspired by his Jean; even in 



BONNIE JEAN. 71 

the days of their early wooing, and when their in- 
tercourse had all the difficulty, all the romance, all 
the mystery, a poetical lover could desire. Thus 
practically controverting his own opinion, ' ' that 
conjugal love does not make such a figure in poesy 
as that other love," &c. — for instance, we have that 
most beautiful song, composed when he left his 
Jean at Ayr (in the west of Scotland,) and had gone 
to prepare for her at Ellisland, near Dumfries. 

"Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 

I dearly like the west, 
For there the bonnie lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best : 
There wild woods grow, and rivers row, 

And monie a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 

Is ever wi' my Jean. 

I see her in the dewy flowers, 

I see her sweet and fair : 
I hear her in the tunefu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air : 
There's not a bonnie flower that springs 

By fountain, shaw, or green ; 
There's not a bonnie bird that sings, 

But minds me o' my Jean." 

Nothing can be more lovely than the luxuriant, 
though rural imagery, the tone of placid but deep 
tenderness, which pervades this sweet song; and to 
feel all its harmony, it is not necessary to sing it — 
it is music in itself. In November, 1778, Mrs. 
Burns took up her residence at Ellisland, and en- 
tered on her duties as a wife and mistress of a 
family, and her husband welcomed her to her home 
("her ain roof-tree,") with the lively, energetic, but 
rather unquotable song, "I hae a wife o' my ain;" 
and subsequently he wrote for her, "O were I on 
Parnassus Hills," and that delightful little bit of 
simpl e fee 1 i r; g — 



72 BONNIE JEAN. 

She is a winsome wee thing, 
She is a handsome wee thing, 
She is a bonnie wee thing, 

This sweet wee wife of mine. 
I never saw a fairer, 
I never lo'ed a dearer, — 
And next my heart I'll wear her, 

For fear my jewel tine ! 

and one of the finest of all his ballads, "Their 
groves o' Sweet myrtle," which not only presents a 
most exquisite rural picture to the fancy, but 
breathes the very soul of chastened and conjugal 
tenderness. 

I remember, as a particular instance — I suppose 
there are thousands — of the tenacity with which 
Burns seizes on the memory, and twines round the 
very fibres of one's heart, that when I was traveling 
in Italy, along that beautiful declivity above the 
river Clitumnus, languidly enjoying the balmy air, 
and gazing with no careless eye on those scenes of 
rich and classical beauty over which memory and 
fancy had shed 

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 
Enveloping the earth ; 

even then, by some strange association, a feeling of 
my childish years came over me, and all the livelong 
day I was singing, sotto voice — 

There's groves o' sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, 

Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume ; 
Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' gran bracken, 

Wi' the burn stealing under the long yellow broom ! 
Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowers, 

Where the blue-bell and go wan lurk lowly unseen, 
For there, lightly tripping among the wild flowers, 

A' listening the linnet, oft wanders my Jean. 

Thus the heath, and the blue-bell, and the gowan, 



BONNIE JEAN. 73 

had superseded the orange and the myrtle on those 
Elysian plains, 

Where the crush'd weed sends forth a rich perfume. 

And Burns and Bonnie Jean were in my heart and 
on my lips, on the spot where Virgil had sung, and 
Fabius and Hannibal met. 

Besides celebrating her in verse, Burns has left us 
a description of his Bonnie Jean in prose. He 
writes (some months after his marriage) to his friend 
Miss Chalmers, — "If I have not got polite tattle, 
modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not 
sickened and disgusted with the multiform course of 
boarding-school affectation ; and I have got the hand- 
some figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest con- 
stitution, and the kindest heart in the country. Mrs. 
Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am 
le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnete homme in the 
universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, (ex- 
cept reading the Scriptures and the Psalms of David 
in metre) spent five minutes together on either prose 
or verse, I must except also a certain late publica- 
tion of Scots Poems, which she has perused very 
devoutly, and all the ballads in the country, as she 
has (O' the partial lover! you will say) the finest 
woodnote wild I ever heard." 

After this, what becomes of the insinuation that 
Burns made an unhappy marriage, — that he was 
11 compelled to invest her with the control of his life, 
whom he seems at first to have selected only for the 
gratification of a temporary inclination;" and "that 
to this circumstance most of his misconduct is to be 
attributed?" Yet this, I believe, is a prevalent im- 
pression. Those whose hearts have glowed, and 
whose eyes have filled with delicious tears over the 
songs of Burns, have reason to be grateful to Mr. 



74 BONNIE JEAN. 

Lockhart, and to a kindred spirit, Allan Cunning- 
ham, for the generous feeling with which they have 
vindicated Burns and his Jean. Such aspersions 
are not only injurious to the dead and cruel to the 
living, but they do incalculable mischief: — they are 
food for the flippant scoffer at all that makes the 
" poetry of life." They unsettle in gentler bosoms 
all faith in love, in truth, in goodness — (alas, such 
disbelief comes soon enough !) they chill and revolt 
the heart, and ' ' take the rose from the fair forehead 
of an innocent love to set a blister there." 

"That Burns," says Lockhart, "ever sank into a 
toper, that his social propensities ever interfered 
with the discharge of the duties of his office, or that, 
in spite of some transitory follies, he ever ceased to 
be a most affectionate husband, — all these charges 
have been insinuated, and they are all false. His 
aberrations of all kinds were occasional, not system- 
atic; they were the aberrations of a man whose 
moral sense was never deadened — of one who en- 
countered more temptations from without and from 
within, than the immense majority of mankind, far 
from having to contend against, are even able to 
imagine," and who died in his thirty-sixth year, 
"ere he had reached that term of life up to which 
passions of many have proved too strong for the 
control of reason, though their mortal career being 
regarded as a whole, they are honoured as among 
the most virtuous of mankind." 

We are told also of "the conjugal and maternal 
tenderness, the prudence and the unwearied for- 
bearance of his Jean," and that she had much need 
of forbearance is not denied; but he ever found in 
her affectionate arms, pardon and peace, and a 
sweetness that only made the source of his c ceasional 
delinquencies sting the deeper. 



BONNIE JEAN. 75 

She still survives (1844) to hear her name, her 
early love, and her youthful charms, warbled in 
the songs of her native land. He, on whom she be- 
stowed her beauty and her maiden truth, dying, has 
left to her the mantle of his fame. What though she 
be now a grandmother? to the fancy, she can never 
grow old, or die. We can never bring her before 
our thoughts but as the lovely, graceful country 
girl, "lightly tripping among the wild flowers," and 
warbling, "Of a' the airts the win' can blaw," — and 
this, O women, is what genius can do for you! 
Wherever the adventurous spirit of her countrymen 
transport them, from the spicy groves of India to 
the wild banks of the Mississippi, the name of 
Bonnie Jean is heard, bringing back to the wanderer 
sweet visions of home, and of days of " auld lang 
syne." The peasant-girl sings it " at the ewe milk- 
ing," and the high-born fair breathes it to her harp 
and her piano. As long as love and song shall sur- 
vive, even those who have learned to appreciate the 
splendid dramatic music of Germany and Italy, who 
can thrill with rapture when Pasta, 

Queen and enchantress of the world of sound, 
Pours forth her soul in song ; 

or when Sontag, 

Carves out her dainty voice as readily 
Into a thousand sweet distinguished tones, 

even them shall still have a soul for the " Banks and 
Braes o' Bonnie Doon,'" still keep a corner of their 
hearts for truth and nature — and Burns's Bonnie 
Jean. 



76 BONNIE JEAN. 



FAITHFUL JEAN. 



By the Rev. Arthur John Lockhart. 



As one, who doth the skyey realm survey, — 
Who hails, in radiant constancy, afar 
O'er night's blue-tower, the sailor-guiding star, — 
Is gladdened by Selen's silver ray, 
Ris'n o'er her hill upon some rippling bay ; 
So he, whose poet-eyes were wandering still 

Where maiden charms his fiery soul would fill 
With passion to inspire his living lay, — 
To carol love of Mary, — musing song 
Of perfect sorrow o'er her early tomb, — 
To chant the Ballochmyle at dewy e'en, — 
Maria's call the twilight woods among, — 
Jessy and Nannie, in their sweetest bloom, — 
Found cheer in the bright face of Bonnie Jean. 



BONNIE JEAN. 77 

THE WIFE OF BURNS. 



By Alan Scott. 



When in wintry January the birthday of Robert 
Burns comes round, and the hearts of all true Scots- 
men turn in pride to their greatest poet, my heart 
always chivalrously inclines to his wife. What a 
clever woman she must have been to have filled so 
well the position of wife to the greatest genius of 
her time ! The wife of another great genius of later 
days has given us clearly to understand the difficulty 
of such a lot. Unlike her, Bonnie Jean never 
realised the greatness of her task and therefore did 
not seek to magnify her office. That she managed 
beautifully for all that is undoubted. 

Whac a dainty picture she makes, the soft, sonsy 
little woman, wholesome and sweet as her own pats 
of golden butter! Not a single harsh line is there 
in her aspect ; all is toned with kindly feeling. The 
round, comely face is kept youthful by good humor, 
the eye is ever ready to dart its pawky glance at the 
saucy joke of a friend, and the plump little hand to 
welcome the stranger with a cantiness becoming the 
mistress of Ellisland. What music there is in her 
voice too — suggestions of all the sweet song of a 
long summer day, from the blythe lilt of the hay- 
makers to the soft crooning of the milkmaids when 
the kye come hame in the gloaming ! Her laugh — 
the echo of the gigantic laughter of the shrewd, 
keen-witted farmers of old Coila — is fresh and vigor- 
ous as the breezes that blow o'er the moorlands of 
Ayrshire. But her dearest charm is her domestic 
manner. As you watch her trotting but and ben be- 



78 BONNIE JEAN. 

tween pantry and dairy and kitchen, keeping the 
cradle rocking with a touch of her foot as she passes 
to and fro, you are reminded of departed generations 
of notable housewives — women who rose morning 
after morning " wi' the skreigh o' day," whose am- 
bition it was to have the best butter in the market, 
who spent their days in milking and churning to 
that end, and their evenings in spinning, or, as 
George Eliot quaintly says, " laying up linen for the 
life to come." Old-fashioned, cheery, plump little 
woman ! I can imagine no more suitable wife for a 
poet, she being no poetess — rather a poem in herself. 

But did she quite understand her man of genius? 
Perhaps not. Perhaps she never read the full mean- 
ing of his glorious eyes. Perhaps to the very last 
he was only the wittiest man in the parish, quicker 
with tongue and pen than either minister or school- 
master, and with a wonderful knack of making 
rhymes. Certainly she never thought him too glori- 
ous to be scolded when he came home late on market 
days, or coaxed out of a moody fit with a blythe 
song. Still, he always held the first place in her 
heart as the lover of her youth, and was more to 
her than she was to him. 

And did Robert Burns miss anything in his Bonnie 
Jean? Did he ever wish for a fuller sympathy in 
the wife of his choice? Very likely he did. Most 
men hanker after what they cannot get. Even the 
chivalrous Ivanhoe sighed for the dark eyes of Re- 
becca while he gazed into the blue ones of Rowena. 
But, unlike many men, our poet was too kind-hearted 
and delicate to let his wife feel aught of this. Be- 
sides, if he ever gave himself up to a contemplation 
of the woman he might have married he would have 
risen consoled not regretful. He might, for instance, 
have married a sweet, angelic woman who, instead 



BONNIE JEAN. 79 

of scolding him, would have pined away into grief 
when brought in contact with the failings of his 
human nature. He might have been united to one 
of your angular women, and had his peace wrecked 
against the principles, proprieties, and peculiarities 
of her three-cornered character. He might have 
wedded a tragedy-queen like Clarinda, from whose 
high sentiment he might have lived, like a man in a 
balloon, in constant danger of an explosion. And, 
worst of all, he might have had an intellectual wife, 
who would have worn herself out in worshipping and 
mocking him alternately, as the different phases of 
his many-sided character presented themselves to 
her view, and who, to a dead certainty, would have 
written a diary ! As for us who, among his admirers, 
think regretfully of Highland Mary, let us remem- 
ber that from all accounts she was of the angelic 
type, and therefore more fitted to be his guardian 
angel in Heaven, while Jean was undoubtedly more 
capable of looking after his temporal interests on 
earth. Yes ! there is much to sadden us in the life 
of Robert Burns, but this one comfort remains ; he 
married a healthy cheery, active woman — a daughter, 
as he was a son, of the people. She did not spoil 
his life, and I daresay he did not spoil hers, though 
I cannot think he would be altogether an exemplary 
husband, seeing he had not the privilege of reading 
the enlightened literature, which is addressed to the 
young married men now-a-days. I can even im- 
agine his Bonnie Jean being a little disappointed in 
him — for all of us life is something less than we ex- 
pect — but I cannot think he would ever be hard with 
her. He was too conscious of his failings to take 
note of other people's. (From perfect men, good 
Lord, deliver us!) And he did wake up to her 
charms sometimes, else we should have missed some 
of our loveliest lyrics. 



80 BONNIE JEAN. 

Women are said to be like flowers. They are rare 
flowers that bloom in wondrous beauty, and are a 
continual source of pleasure and gratification to 
their admirers. And there are in old-fashioned 
gardens uninteresting herbs that you would pass by 
if it were not for the faint fragrance they exhale. 
Ah! these are the flowers that have memories. 
There is rosemary, that's for remembrance. You 
pluck it and lay it aside for ever so long, away from 
the light. But when you take it out and press it the 
sweet fragrance greets you once more, and you are 
reminded of the old-fashioned garden and the sun- 
shine and light. Women are like flowers, they have 
different charms. There are two women I cannot 
help associating in my mind — the wife of Carlyle 
and the wife of Burns. Carlyle's wife was a woman 
of rare attainments, admired by many of the gifted 
men of her time, the great glory and pride of the 
most gifted of all. This lesser Jeanie of ours was 
scarcely heard of while she made home for the 
great Poet of the People ; but now, after long years, 
you have only to mention her name and you will re- 
call the music of many of Scotland's sweetest songs. 



BONNIE JEAN. 81 

BONNIE JEAN IN HER OLD AGE. 



Mr. James Mackenzie tells in a recent number of 
the Scots' Magazine, that his father, who was one of 
the founders of the Royal Scottish Academy, 
painted Burns' ''Bonnie Jean" when nearing her 
70th year. " He found her to be a woman of much 
originality, and of rare open-heartedness and benev- 
olence. And yet he thought it likely enough that 
Burns may have been captivated more by her per- 
sonal than her mental attractions; because it was 
evident that she must have been, if not beautiful, 
certain very comely of feature, and her form must 
have been superb. Her figure was admirable, even 
in old age. 




82 BONNIE JEAN. 

HOW HEW AINSLIE KISSED JEAN 
ARMOUR. 



By Thomas C. Latto. 



Before Ainslie left for America, he had a great 
desire to pay what he called his "devours" to 
Mistress Jean Armour. On arriving at Dumfries, 
he visited Burns's grave, and then sought Mrs. 
Burns's humble cottage. After a pleasant " twa- 
handed crack," they walked together to Lincluden 
Abbey, and Mrs. Burns paused on a sheltered and 
lovely spot. "It was just here," she said, "that 
my man often paused, and I believe made up many 
a poem an' sang ere he cam' in to write it down. 
He was never fractious — aye good-natured and kind 
baith to the bairns and to me." On parting, Ainslie 
said to her, ' ' I wad like weel ere I gae, if ye wad 
permit me, to kiss the cheek o' Burns's faithful Jean, 
to be a reminder to me o' this meeting when I am 
far awa'." She laughed, and holding up her face to 
him, said, "Aye, lad, an' welcome. " So she and 
Burns's fervent disciple parted, he to America, in his 
own words, "to seek for themselves and friends a 
resting-place in the young world of the West, where 
those seeds of freedom and independence that ' the 
voice of Coila ' had sown in their souls might flourish 
and bloom, unstinted by the poisonous pruning of 
despots or the deadly mildew of corruption. " 

" Noo, Jeanie, that we've daunert by 
Scenes dear to hint an' you, lass, 

A sudden thocht starts in my head — 
Na ! frae the heart, I trow, lass. 



BONNIE JEAN. 83 

O, micht I daur, ere pairt for aye, 

Frae ane I'm thirl'd to lo'e, lass, 
Bear ower the sea a memory, 

Kiss o' thy bonnie mou', lass? 

"Where one great Muse, 'mang cushie-doos 

Once roam'd, love ditties broodin', 
We've wander'd in the wavin' wuds 

That scourge thy wa's, Lincluden ; 
Yet let a laddie, wha has left 

His Bourocks o' Bargeny, 
Tak' sic a precious boon, for ance, 

And only ance, dear Jeanie." 

The dear old dame, nae thocht o' shame, 

In her saft e'e a twinkle, 
Held up her snappy lips, untouched 

By ae unseemly wrinkle ; 
" Oo aye," she said, " an' welcome, lad, 

It's a' that I can gie thee, 
But gin it do thee ony guide, 

My man, then tak' it wi' thee." 



84 BONNIE JEAN. 

MRS. BURNS. 



From Cunningham's "Life and Land of Burns," {1841.) 



" There's not a bonnie flower that springs, 
By fountain, shaw, or green, — 

There's not a bonnie bird that sings, 
But minds me o' my Jean. 



When Bishop Percy lamented that there were few 
songs in our language expressing the joys of wedded 
love, Burns was a lad some two and twenty years 
old; but though his life was brief, he lived long 
enough to hinder Percy's remark from continuing 
proverbial, and gladdened our firesides with strains 
dedicated to household love, which live in every 
heart, and are heard from every tongue. 

Few of our poets have been happy in their wives ; 
Shakespeare neglected his, and all but forgot her in 
his will; Milton, though more than once married, 
was unable to find that domestic quiet which, per- 
haps his own nature prevented him from obtaining ; 
the poems of Dryden bear witness to the unhappiness 
of his choice, for the sharpness of his satire has an 
additional edge when a fling can be had at matrimony ; 
and Addison sought the comfort abroad, which his 
wife, the Dowager Countess of Warwick, denied 
him at home. To this the wife of Burns, the 
" bonnie Jean" of many a far-famed song, was an 
exception; she was a country girl of the west of 
Scotland, remarkable for the elegance of her person 
and the sweetness of her voice. Her father was a 
respectable Master- Mason in Mauchline, in good em- 
ployment, and with a family of eleven children. 
Jean was born in February 1765, and was, when 



BONNIE JEAN. 85 

Burns became intimate with her but newly out of 
her teens. How her aquaintance with the poet be- 
gan, she loved to relate: — she had laid some linen 
webs on the grass to bleach, and while sprinkling 
them with water from a neighboring burn, a favorite 
collie of the poet's ran across them, staining them 
with its feet, to fawn upon her ; she struck at the 
dog, when Burns stepped forward, and reproached 
her in the words of Allan Ramsay : — 

" E'en as he fawned, she strak the poor dumb tyke." 

The fair bleacher smiled, and an aquaintance com- 
menced, which a country place like Mauchline 
afforded many opportunities to promote. 

This ripened into love ; she was united to Burns, 
and during his too short life, bore to him four sons 
and five daughters, three of whom, and these all 
men, survive. She was a kind and dutiful wife, an 
affectionate mother, and a good neighbor. All who 
knew her liked her ; and though country bred, and 
with moderate education, she was not wanting in 
conversation fit for the most accomplished, and left 
an impression of her good sense on the many 
strangers, who, like pilgrims to a shrine, went to see 
her for the sake of the Bard. It should be added, 
that she danced with grace and neatness, and sang, 
moreover, Scottish songs with a spirit, a feeling, 
and a sweetness but seldom found together. ' ' She 
has," says Burns to Miss Chalmers, "the finest 
wood-note- wild I ever heard." The two best songs 
which her charms called forth are those beginning — 

"Of a' the airts the win' can blaw," 
and 

11 O were I on Parnassus' hill." 

The former was written, as he himself tells us, dur- 
ing the honey moon ; and what a glorious welcome 



86 BONNIE JEAN. 

to the new farm does the latter contain ! Had he 
welcomed her to Hagley or to Stowe, the strain 
could not have come more freely from the heart, or 
had more of passion or of poetry about it. One of 
these alone had been enough to have embalmed the 
name of Mistress in song; but the two together 
have immortalized a wife. 

But there are other songs, excellent of their kind, 
and only inferior in beauty because they cannot 
abide comparisim with things perfect, that record 
the beauty of Jean Armour. How exquisite is this 
brief strain — the finest essences are held in the 
smallest bottles : — 

' • Louis, what reck I by thee, 

Or Geordie on his ocean ? 
Dyvor, beggar-loons to me — 

I reign in Jeanie's bosom. 

Let her crown my love her law, 
And in her breast enthrone me ; 

Kings and Nations— swith, awa' ! 
Reif randies, I disown ye !" 

Jean Armour, whose name has no chance of pass- 
ing from earth, died on Wednesday, the 26th of 
March, 1834, and was buried by the side of her hus- 
band, whom she had survived nearly eight-and-thirty 
years. 



BONNIE JEAN. 87 

THE WIFE OF BURNS. 



By John Gibson Lockhart. 



' ' To make a happy fireside clime 

For weans and wife, 
That's the true pathos and sublime 

Of human life." 



Burns, as soon as his bruised limb was able for a 
journey, rode to Mossgiel, and went through the 
ceremony of a Justice-of Peace marriage with Jean 
Armour, in the writing-chambers of his friend 
Gavin Hamilton. He then crossed the country to 
Dalswinton, and concluded his bargain with Mr. 
Miller as to the farm of Ellisland, on terms which 
must undoubtedly have been considered by both 
parties as highly favorable to the poet ; they were 
indeed fixed by two of Burn's old friends who 
accompanied him for that purpose from Ayrshire. 
The lease was for four successive terms, of nineteen 
years each, — in all seventy-six years; the rent for 
the first three years and crops ^"50; during the re- 
mainder of the period ^70. Mr. Miller bound him- 
self to defray the expenses of any plantations 
which Burns might please to make on the banks of 
the river; and the farmhouse and offices being in a 
dilapidated condition, the new tenant was to receive 
^£300 from the proprietor for the erection of suit- 
able buildings. " The land," says Allan Cunning- 
ham, "was good, the rent moderate, and the 
markets rising." 

Burns entered on possession of his farm at Whit- 
suntide 1788, but the necessary rebuilding of the 
house prevented his removing Mrs. Burns thither 



88 BONNIE JEAN. 

until the season was far advanced. He had, more- 
over, to qualify himself for holding his Excise com- 
mission by six weeks' attendance on the business of 
that profession in Tarbolton. From these circum- 
stances, he had this summer a wandering and un- 
settled life, and Dr. Currie mentions this as one of 
his chief misfortunes. "The poet," as he says, 
"was continually riding between Ayrshire and 
Dumfriesshire; and, often spending a night on the 
road, sometimes fell into company and forgot the 
good resolutions he had formed." 

What these resolutions were the poet himself 
shall tell us. On the third day of his residence at 
Ellisland, he thus writes to Mr. Ainslie: " I have all 
along hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred to 
arms, among the light horse, the piquet guards of 
fancy, a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the 
brain ; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these 
giddy battalions. Cost what it will, I am deter- 
mined to buy in among the grave squadrons of 
heavy-armed thought, or the artillery-corps of plod- 
ding contrivance. * * Were it not for the 
terrors of my ticklish situation respecting a family 
of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step 
I have taken is vastly for my happiness." 

To all his friends he expresses himself in terms 
of similar satisfaction in regard to his marriage. 
" Your surmise, madam," he writes to Mrs. Dunlop 
(July ioth), " is just. I am indeed a husband. I 
found a once much-loved, and still much-loved 
female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of 
the naked elements, but as I enabled her to purchase 
a shelter, and there is no sporting with a fellow- 
creatures happiness or misery. The most placid 
good-nature and sweetness of disposition ; a warm 
heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love 






BONNIE JEAN. 89 

me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set 
off to the best advantage by a more than commonly 
handsome figure; these, I think, in a woman, may 
make a good wife, though she should never have 
read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testament, nor danced in higher assembly than a 
penny-pay wedding * * To jealousy or in- 
fidelity I am, an equal stranger; my preservative 
from the first, is the most thorough consciousness of 
her sentiments of honor, and her attachment to me ; 
my antidote against the last, is my long and deep- 
rooted affection for her. In housewife matters, of 
aptness to learn, and activity to execute, she is em- 
inently mistress, and during my absence in Niths- 
dale, she is regularly and constantly an apprentice 
to my mother and sisters in their dairy, and other 
rural business. * * You are right that a 
bachelor state would have ensured me more friends ; 
but from a cause you will easily guess, conscious 
peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and un- 
mistrusting confidence in approaching my God, 
would seldom have been of the number." 

Some months later, he tells Miss Chalmers that his 
marriage "was not, perhaps, in consequence of the 
attachment of romance," he is addressing a young 
lady — "but," he continues, " I have no cause to re- 
pent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish man- 
ners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and 
disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding- 
school affectation; and I have got the handsomest 
figure, sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, 
and the kindest heart in the country. Mrs. Burns 
believes as firmly as her creed, that I am "le plus 
esprit et le plus honnet homme" in the universe; 
although she scarcely ever, in her life, except the 
Scriptures and the Psalms of David in metre, spent 



90 BONNIE JEAN. 

five minutes together on either prose or verse — I 
must except also a certain late publication of Scotch 
Poems, which she has perused very devoutly, and, 
all the Ballads of the country, as she has (O the 
partial lover you will say) the finest wood-note-wild 
I ever heard." 

It was during this honeymoon, as he calls it, while 
chiefly resident in a miserable hovel at Ellisland, 
and only occasionally spending a day or two in Ayr- 
shire, that he wrote the beautiful song — 

" Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 

I dearly like the west ; 
For there the bonnie lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best ; 
There wild-woods grow, and rivers row, 

And mony a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 

Is ever wi' my Jean. 

I see her in the dewy flowers, 

I see her sweet and fair : 
I see her in the tunefu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air ; 
There's not a bonnie flower, that springs, 

By fountain, shaw, or green ; 
There's not a bonnie bird that sings, 

But minds me o' my Jean." 

"A discerning reader," says Mr. Walker, "will 
perceive that the letters in which he announces his 
marriage to some of his most respected correspond- 
ents, are written in that state when the mind is 
pained by reflecting on an unwelcome step, and finds 
relief to itself in seeking arguments to justify the 
deed, and lessen its advantages in the opinion of 
others." I confess I am not able to discern any 
traces of this kind of feeling in any of Burns's 
letters on this interesting and important occasion. 
Mr. Walker seems to take it for granted, that be- 



BONNIE JEAN. 91 

cause Burns admired the superior manners and 
accomplishments of women of the higher ranks of 
society, he must necessarily, whenever he discovered 
"the interest which he had the power of creating" 
in such persons, have aspired to find a wife among 
them. But it is, to say the least of the matter, 
extremely doubtful, that Burns, if he had had a 
mind, could have found any high-born maiden will- 
ing to partake sucn fortunes as his were likely to be, 
and yet possessed of such qualifications for making 
him a happy man, as he had ready for his acceptance 
in his " Bonnie Jean." The proud heart of the poet 
could never have stooped itself to woo for gold ; and 
birth and high-breeding could only have been intro- 
duced into a farmhouse to embitter, in the upshot, 
the whole existence of its inmates. It is very easy 
to say, that had Burns married an accomplished 
woman, he might have found domestic evenings 
sufficient to satisfy all the cravings of his mind — 
abandoned tavern haunts and jollities for ever — and 
settled down into a regular pattern-character. But 
it is at least as possible, that consequences of an 
exactly opposite nature might have ensued. Any 
marriage, such as Professor Walker alludes to, 
would, in his case, have been more unequal than 
either of those that made Dryden and Addison 
miserable for life. Sir Walter Scott, in his "Life 
of Dryden" (p. 90), has well described the difficult 
situation of her who has ' ' to endure the apparently 
causeless fluctuation of spirits incident to one 
doomed to labour incessantly in the feverish exercise 
of the imagination. Unintentional neglect," says 
he, "and the inevitable relaxation, or rather sinking 
of spirit, which follows violent mental exertion, are 
easily misconstrued into capricious rudeness, or in- 
tentional offence, and life is embittered by mutual 



92 BONNIE JEAN. 

accusation, not less intolerable because reciprocally 
unjust." Such were the difficulties under which the 
domestic peace both of Addison and Dryden went 
to wreck; and yet, say nothing of manners and 
habits of the highest elegance and polish in either 
case, they were both of them men of strictly pure 
and correct conduct in their conjugal capacities; and 
who can doubt that all these difficulties must have 
been enhanced tenfold, had any women of superior 
condition linked her fortunes with Robert Burns, a 
man at once of the very warmest animal tempera- 
ment, and the most wayward and moody of all his 
melancholy and irritable tribe, who had little vanity 
that could have been grateful by a species of con- 
nection, which, unless he had found a human angel, 
must have been continually wounding his pride? 
But, in truth, these speculations are all worse than 
worthless. Burns, with all his faults, was an honest 
and high-spirited man, and he loved the mother of 
his children ; and had he hesitated to make her his 
wife, he must have sunk into the callousness of a 
ruffian, or that misery of miseries, the remorse of a 
poet. 

The Reverend Hamilton Paul ("Life of Burns," 
p. 45) takes an original view of this business " Much 
praise," says he, "has been lavished on Burns for 
renewing his engagement with Jean when in the 
blaze of his fame. * * The praise is mis- 
placed. We do not think a man entitled to credit or 
commendation for doing what the law could compel 
him to perform. Burns was in reality a married 
man, and it is truly ludicrous to hear him, aware, as 
he must have been, of the indissoluble power of the 
obligation, though every document was destroyed, 
talking of himself as a bachelor." 

To return to onr story. Burns complains sadly of 



BONNIE JEAN. 93 

solitary condition, when living- in the only hovel that 
he found extant on his farm. "I am," says he 
(September 9th), "busy with my harvest; but for 
all that most pleasurable part of life called social 
intercourse, I am here at the very elbow of existence. 
The only things that are to be found in this country 
in any degree of perfection are stupidity and cant- 
ing. Prose, they only know in graces, etc. , and the 
value of these they estimate as they do their plaid- 
ing webs, by the ell. As for the Muses, they have 
as much idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet." And 
in a letter to Miss Chalmers (September 16th, 1788,) 
he says, " This hovel that I shelter in while occa- 
sionally here is pervious to every blast that blows, 
and every shower that falls, and I am only pre- 
served from being chilled to death by being suffo- 
cated by smoke. You will be pleased to hear that I 
have laid aside idle eclat, and bind every day after 
my reapers." 

His house, however, did not take much time in 
building, nor had he reason to complain of want of 
society long ; nor, it must be added, did Burns bind 
every day after the reapers. 

He brought his wife home to Ellisland about the 
end of November ; and few housekeepers start with 
a larger provision of young mouths to feed than did 
this couple. Mrs. Burns had lain in this autumn, 
for the second time, of twins, and I suppose " sonsy, 
smirking, dear-bought Bess" accompanied her 
younger brothers and sisters from Mossgiel. From 
that quarter also Burns brought a whole establish- 
ment of servants, male and female, who, of course, 
as was then the universal custom amongst the small 
farmers, both of the west and south of Scotland, 
partook, at the same table, of the same fare with 
their master and mistress. 



94 BONNIE JEAN. 

Ellisland is beautifully situated on the banks of 
the Nith, about six miles above Dumfries, exactly 
opposite to the house of Dalswinton, and those noble 
woods and gardens amidst which Burns's landlord, 
the ingenious Mr. Patrick Miller, found relaxation 
from the scientific studies and researches in which 
he so greatly excelled. On the Dalswinton side, the 
river washes lawns and groves: but over against 
these the bank rises into a long red scaut of consid- 
erable height, along the verge of which, where the 
bare shingle of the precipice all but overhangs the 
stream, Burns had his favourite walk, and might 
now be seen striding alone, early and late, especially 
when the winds were loud, and the waters below 
him swollen and turbulent. For he was one of 
those that enjoy nature most in the more serious and 
severe of her aspects; and throughout his poetry, 
for one allusion to the liveliness of spring, or the 
splendor of summer, it would be easy to point out 
twenty in which he records the solemn delight with 
which he contemplated the melancholy grandeur of 
autumn, or the savage gloom of winter. Indeed, I 
cannot but think, that the result of an exact inquiry 
into the composition of Burns's poems, would be, 
that "his vein," like that of Milton, flowed most 
happily "from the autumnal equinox to the vernal." 
Of Lord Byron, we know that his vein flowed best 
at midnight ; and Burns has himself told us, that it 
was his custom "to take a gloamin' shot at the 
Muses." 

The poet was accustomed to say, that the most 
happy period of his life was the first winter he spent 
at Ellisland, for the first time under a roof of his 
own, with his wife and children about him : and in 
spite of occasional lapses into the melancholy which 
had haunted his youth, looking forward to a life of 






BONNIE JEAN. 95 

well-regulated, and not ill-rewarded, industry. It is 
known that he welcomed his wife to her roof-tree at 
Ellisland in the song, — 

"I hae a wife o' my ain, I'll partake wi' naebody ; 
I'll tak cuckold frae nane, I'll gie cuckold to naebody. 
I hae a penny to spend — there, thanks to naebody ; 
I hae nothing to lend — I'll borrow frae naebody." 

In commenting on this " little lively lucky song," 
as he well calls it, Mr. Allan Cunningham says: 
" Burns had built his house, — he had committed his 
seed — corn to the ground, — he was in the prime, nay 
the morning of life, — and strength, and agricultural 
skill were on his side, — his genius had been 
acknowledged by his country, and rewarded by a 
subscription more extensive than any Scottish poet 
ever received before ; no wonder, therefore, that he 
broke out into voluntary song, expressive of his 
sense of importance and independance. " Another 
song was composed in honor of Mrs. Burns, during 
the happy weeks that followed her arrival at 
Ellisland:— 

"Oh, were I on Parnassus hill, 
Or had of Helicon my fill, 
That I might catch poetic skill, 
To sing how dear I love thee ! 

But Nith maun be my muse's well, 
My muse maun be thy bonnie sel', 
On Corsincon I'll glowre and spell, 
And write how dear I love thee !" 



96 BONNIE JEAN. 

MRS. BURNS' CIRCUMSTANCES 
AFTER THE POET'S DEATH. 



The only dependence of Mrs. Burns, after her 
husband's death, was on an annuity of ten pounds, 
arising from a benefit society connected with the 
Excise, the books and other moveable property left 
to her, and the generosity of the public. The sub- 
scription, as we are informed by Dr. Currie, pro- 
duced seven hundred pounds ; and the works of the 
poet, as edited with regular taste and judgment by 
that gentleman, brought nearly two thousand more. 
One half of the latter sum was lent on a bond to a 
Galloway gentleman who continued to pay five per 
cent, for it till a late period. Mrs. Burns was thus 
enabled to support and educate her family in a man- 
ner creditable to the memory of her husband. She 
continued to reside in the house which had been 
occupied by her husband and herself, and 

" never changed, nor wished to change her place." 

For many years after her sons had left her to pursue 
their fortunes in the world, she lived in a decent and 
respectable manner, on an income which never 
amounted to more than ^62 per annum. At length, 
in 1 81 7, at a festival held in Edinburgh to celebrate 
the birth-day of the bard, Mr. Henry, (now Lord) 
Cockburn acting as president, it was proposed by 
Mr. Maule of Panmure (now Lord Panmure), that 
some permanent addition should be made to the in- 
come of the poet's widow. The idea appeared to be 
favourably received, but the subscription did not fill 
rapidly. Mr. Maule then said that the burden of 
the provision should fall upon himself, and immed- 



BONNIE JEAN. 97 

iately executed a bond, entitling Mrs. Burns to an 
annuity of ^50 as long as she lived. This act, to- 
gether with the generosity of the same gentleman to 
Nathaniel Gow, in his latter and evil days, must 
ever endear the name of Lord Panmure to all who 
feel warmly on the subjects of Scottish poetry and 
Scottish music. Mr. Maule's pension had not been 
enjoyed by the widow more than a year and a half, 
when her youngest son, James, attained the rank of 
Captain with a situation in the commissariat, and 
was thus enabled to relieve her from the necessity 
of being beholden to a stranger's hand for any share 
of her support. She accordingly resigned the 
pension. Mr. M'Diarmid, who records these cir- 
cumstances, adds in another place, that during her 
subsequent years, Mrs. Burns enjoyed an income of 
about two hundred a year, a great part of which, as 
it was not needed by her, she dispensed in charities. 
Her whole conduct in widowhood was such as to 
secure universal esteem in the town where she 
resided. She died March 26, 1834, in the 68th year 
of her age, and was buried beside her illustrious 
husband, in the mansoleum at Dumfries. 



98 BONNIE JEAN. 

BONNIE JEAN. 

By George Dobie. 

We'll sing the nicht Jean Armour's praise, 

She's worthy o' a sang, 
For it was Burns, her ain guidman, 

That raised her 'bin the thrang. 
While bleechin' claes on Mauchline Braes, 

By Rab she first was seen, 
Where Cupid's darts pierced baith the hearts 

O' Burns and bonnie Jean. 

Jean was the jewel o' his heart, 

The apple o' his e'e, 
And little kent that country maid 

That she a queen wad be. 
For to us lang she'll reign in sang, 

And gain oor high esteem ; 
She prov'd through life a faithfu' wife, 

Our poet's bonnie Jean. 

To Burns, Jean was the sweetest lass 

That ever graced the West, 
Nae ither belle could her surpass, 

She was to him the best. 
The westlin' win's will cease to blaw, 

And gowans deck the green, 
Before it ever fades awa' 

The name o' bonnie Jean. 

On this, the poet's natal day, 

We'll sing to bonnie Jean ; 
Had Rab himsel' been here to hear't, 

He had been proud, I ween. 
For this ance charmin', artless lass, 

This peerless village queen, 
She'll lang remembered be by us 

As Burn's bonnie Jean. 



BONNIE JEAN. 99 

DEATH AND CHARACTER OF MRS. 
BURNS. 



From Blackie's Edition of Bums. 



At a late hour of the night of Wednesday, the 26th 
March, 1834, the world and its concerns closed for- 
ever on Mrs. Jean Armour, — the venerable relict of 
the Poet Burns. On the Saturday preceding, she 
was seized with paralysis for the fourth time during 
the last few years; and although perfectly con- 
scious of her situation, and the presence of friends, 
became deprived, before she could be removed to 
bed, of the faculty of speech, and in a day or two 
thereafter of the sense of hearing. Still she lay 
wonderfully calm and composed, and, in the opinion 
of the medical attendant, suffered from weakness 
rather than from pain. Frequently she gazed, with 
the greatest earnestness, on her grand-daughter, 
Sarah; and it was easy to read what was passing 
within, from the tears that filled her aged eyes, and 
trickled down her cheeks. To another individual 
she directed looks so eager and full of meaning, as 
to impress him with the idea that she had some 
dying request to make, and deeply regretted that it 
was too late ; for even if her salvation had depended 
on the exertion, she was unfortunately incapacitated 
from uttering a syllable, guiding a pen, or even mak- 
ing an intelligent sign. The mind, in her case, 
survived the body; and this, perhaps, was the only 
painful circumstances attending her death-bed, — con- 
sidering how admirable her conduct had always been, 
her general health so sound, her span protracted be- 
yond the common lot, her character for prudence 



ioo BONNIE JEAN. 

and piety so well established, and her situation in 
life every way so comfortable. On the night of 
Tuesday, or morning of Wednesday, a fifth shock, 
unperceived by the attendants, deprived Mrs. Burns 
of mental consciousness; and from that time, till 
the hour of her death, her situation was exactly that 
of a breathing corpse. And thus passed away all 
that remained of " Bonnie Jean," — the relict of a 
man, whose fame is as wide as the world itself, and 
the venerated heroine of many a lay which bid fair 
to live in the memories of the people of Scotland, 
and of thousands far removed from its shores, as 
long as the language in which they are written is 
spoken or understood. 

The deceased was born at Mauchline, in February 
1765, and had thus entered the seventieth year of 
her age. Her father was an industrious master 
mason, in good employment, who enjoyed the esteem 
of the gentry and others within the district, and 
reared the numerous family of eleven sons and 
daughters, four of whom still survive, — viz: Robert, 
a respectable merchant in London; James, who re- 
sides in the town of Paisley; Mrs. Lees and Mrs. 
Brown. The alleged circumstances attending Mrs. 
Burns' union with the Bard are well known, and 
may be dismissed with the remark, that we have 
good authority for saying, that they have been in- 
correctly narrated by nearly every writer who has 
touched upon the subject. To the poet, Jean 
Armour bore a family of five sons and four daughters. 
The whole of the latter died in early life, and were 
interred in the cemetery of their maternal grand- 
father in Mauchline church-yard. Of the sons two 
died very young, — viz: Francis Wallace and Max- 
well Burns, the last of whom was a posthumos child, 
born the very day his father was buried. Of the 



BONNIE JEAN. 101 

said family of nine three sons survive — Robert, the 
eldest, a retired officer of the Accomptant-General's 
Department, Stamp Office, London, now in Dum- 
fries; and William and James Glencairn Burns, in 
the Hon. the East India Company's service. 

Burns certainly left his family poor, (and how 
could it be otherwise?) but it is not true, as Collector 
Findlater has most successfully shown, that they 
were in immediate want, or lacked any necessary 
comfort. The relief fund annuity of an Excise- 
man's widow is known to be small (now, we believe 
about ^12 per annum); but Providence, shortly 
after the husband and father's decease, raised up to 
the family many valuable friends. Passing exigen- 
cies were supplied from this honourable source; and 
no lengthened period elapsed until the active and 
disinterested benevolence of Dr. Currie, in conjunc- 
tion with his excellent talents, placed at the feet of 
the family, to the great delight of the people of 
Scotland, very nearly ^2,000 sterling, in name of 
profits arising from the Liverpool edition of the 
Poet's works. The Poet died in 1796, and up to 
1 8 18, his widow's income exceeded not, if it equalled, 
sixty pounds per annum. But on this sum, small as 
it may appear, she contrived to maintain a decent 
appearance, was never known to be in debt or want- 
ing in charity — so unaspiring were her ambition and 
views, and undeviating her prudence, economy, and 
frugality. At the period just mentioned, Captain 
James Glencairn Burns wrote in breathless haste 
from India to say that having obtained promotion, 
through the kindness of the Marquis of Hastings, 
he had been enabled to set apart ^"150 yearly for the 
uses of his mother, and, as an earnest of affection, 
transmitted a draft for ^75. And it is due to this 
gentleman to say, that from first to last, including 



io2 BONNIE JEAN. 

some assistance from his brother, and allowances for 
his infant daughter, Sarah, he remitted his mother in 
all the handsome sum of ^2,400 sterling. Leave of 
absence, and some other circumstances, at length 
impaired the means, and changed the fortunes, of 
the individual alluded to; Captain William Burns, 
later in life very cheerfully took his brother's place, 
and discharged, with equal promptitude, generosity, 
and affection, duties dear to the best and kindliest 
feelings of our nature. In this way, for sixteen 
years at the least, Mrs. Burns enjoyed an income of 
^200 per annum — a change of fortune which en- 
abled her to add many comforts to her decent domi- 
cile, watch over the education of a favourite grand- 
child, and exercise, on a broader scale, the Christian 
duty of charity, which she did the more efficiently 
by acting in most cases as her own almoner. 

It is generally known, that Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop 
was the first efficient patroness of Robert Burns. Of 
the accuracy of this fact his writings furnish the most 
undoubted proof; and it would appear that her 
children inherited her feelings and spread the same 
mantle of friendship over the Poet's family. For a 
greater number of years than our memory can 
trace, Mrs. Burns dined every Sunday, after attend- 
ing the divine service in St. Michael's Church, with 
the late Mrs. Perochan, the eldest daughter of Mrs, 
Dunlop of Dunlop; and was noticed and patronised 
in the most flattering manner by various living 
members of the same ancient family, who might 
feel offended did we dare to record all we happen 
to know of their exertions in a cause which Scots- 
men, wherever situated, are prone to identify with 
the land of their birth. 

The term of Mrs. Burns' widowhood extended to 
thirty-eight years, in itself rather an unusual cir- 



BONNIE JEAN. 103 

cumstance— and in July 179 6 , w1ien the bereavement 
occurred, she was but little beyond the age at which 
the majority of females marry. But she had too 
much respect for the memory of her husband, and 
regard for his children, to think of changing her 
name, although she might have done so more than 
once with advantage; and was even careful to secure 
on lease, and renair and embellish, as soon as she 
could afford it, the decent though modest mansion 
in which he died. And here, for more than thirty 
years, she was visited by thousands of strangers 
from the Peer down to itinerant sonneteers— a ^ class 
of persons to whom she never refused an audience, 
or dismissed unrewarded. Occasionally, during the 
summer months, she was a good deal annoyed ; but 
she bore all in patience, and although naturally fond 
of quiet, seemed to consider her house as open to 
visitors, and its mistress, in some degree, the prop- 
erty of the public. But the attentions of strangers 
neither turned her head, nor were ever alluded to in 
the spirit of boasting; and had it not been for a fe- 
male friend who accompanied her on one occasion to 
the King's Arms Inn, to meet, by invitation, the 
Marchioness of Hastings, no one could have known 
that that excellent lady directed the present Marquis, 
who was then a boy, to present Mrs. Burns with a 
glass of wine, and at the same time remarked that 
"he should consider himself very highly honoured, 
and cherish the recollection of having met the Poet's 
widow, as long as he lived." Hers, in short, was 
one of those well-balanced minds that cling instinct- 
ively to propriety and the medium in all things ; and 
such as knew the deceased, earliest and latest, were 
unconscious of any change in her demeanor and 
habits, excepting, perhaps, greater attention to dress, 
and more refinement of manner, insensibly ac- 



104 BONNIE JEAN. 

quired by frequent intercourse with families of the 
first respectability. In her tastes, she was frugal, 
simple, and pure ; and delighted in music, pictures, 
and flowers. In spring and summer, it was im- 
possible to pass her windows without being struck 
with the beauty of the floral treasures they con- 
tained ; and if extravagant in anything, it was in the 
article of roots and plants of the finest sort. Fond 
of the society of young people, she mingled, as long 
as able, in their innocent pleasures, and cheerfully 
filled for them the cup " which cheers but not ineb- 
riates." Although neither a sentimentalist nor a 
" blue stocking," she was a clever woman, possessed 
great shrewdness, discriminated character admirably, 
and frequently made very pithy remarks; and were 
this the proper place for such detail proofs of what 
is stated might easily be adduced. 

When )^oung, she must have been a handsome 
comely woman, if not indeed a beauty, when the 
Poet saw her for the first time on a bleaching- green 
at Mauchline, engaged like Peggy and Jenny at 
Habbie's Howe. Her limbs were cast in the finest 
mould; and up to middle life her jet-black eyes were 
clear and sparkling, her carriage easy, and her step 
light. The writer of the present sketch never saw 
Mrs. Burns dance, nor heard her sing ; but he has 
learned from others that she moved with great grace 
on the floor, and chanted her "wood-notes wild " in 
a style but rarely equalled b}^ unprofessional singers. 
Her voice was a brilliant treble, and in singing 
"Coolen," "I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen," and 
other songs, she rose without effort as high as B 
natural. In ballad poetry her taste was good, and 
range of reading rather extensive. Her memory, 
too, was strong, and she could quote when she 
chose at considerable length, and with great aptitude. 



BONNIE JEAN. 105 

Of these powers the bard was so well aware that he 
read to her almost every piece he composed, and 
was not ashamed to own that he had profited by her 
judgment. In fact, none save relations, neighbors, 
and friends, could form a proper estimate of the 
character of Mrs. Burns. In the presence of 
strangers she was shy and silent, and required to be 
drawn out, or, as some say, shown off to advantage, 
by persons who possessed her confidence, and knew 
her intimately. 

But we have, perhaps, said enough, and although 
our heart has been thrown into our words, the por- 
trait given is so strictly true to nature, that we con- 
clude by saying, in the spirit of friendship, not of 
yesterday, — peace to the manes, and honour to the 
memory, of Bonnie Jean. 

The remains of Mrs. Burns were interred in the 
family vault on Tuesday, the 1st April, with many 
marks of public respect, in presence of an immense 
crowd of spectators. Independent^ of the Bard's 
Mausoleum, St. Michael's Churchyard is perhaps 
the most remarkable cemetery in Britain ; amidst in- 
numerable tombs thousands on thousands sleep be- 
low; and on the day alluded to, public interest or 
curiosity waxed so intensely, that it became, if such 
an expression may be used, instinct with life as well 
as death. By many, a strong wish was expressed 
that the funeral should be made broadly public; 
others again objected to everything like parade, as 
unsuited to the quiet retiring character of the de- 
ceased ; and amidst counsels and wishes so opposite 
and conflicting, the relatives and executors had a 
duty to discharge which was felt to be exceedingly 
onerous and perplexing. The Magistrates and Com- 
missioners of Police politely offered to mark their 
respect for Mrs. Burns' memory by attending her 



106 BONNIE JEAN. 

funeral in their public capacity — an offer so honour- 
able that it was at once acknowledged and acceded 
to by the trustees. But something more was wanted, 
in the opinion of at least a portion of the public; 
and as the street in which the deceased resided is 
short, narrow and situated so near to the church- 
yard, as to injure the appearance of the procession, 
it was anxiously asked that the coffin should be con- 
veyed in a hearse to the Council Chambers stairs, 
and from thence carried shoulder-high along the 
line of the principal street. On reflection, however, 
it was deemed better that the living should go to the 
dead, than the dead to the living The Magistrates 
agreed in the propriety of this, and issued cards to 
the whole of the Council, appointing a meeting at 
half-past eleven on the morning of Tuesday, at which 
hour they assembled, and shortly after moved in a 
body to Burns' street, amidst a throng of people, 
many of whom had voluntarily arrayed themselves 
in sables such as has rarely been witnessed on the 
streets of Dumfries. Between two and three hund- 
red funeral letters were issued in compliance with 
the usual custom ; and in this way, while the private 
feeling of friends were conciliated, the public were 
gratified in as far as was deemed consistent with the 
rules of decorum. 

As many persons were received into the house as 
it could possibly contain, including various clergy- 
men, citizen friends, and country gentlemen, among 
the latter of whom we observed Sir Thos. Wallace, 
a kind personal friend of the deceased; Sir Thos. 
Kirkpatrick; Mr. Dunlop, South wick ; Mr. Jas. 
M'Alpine Leny of Dalswinton; Mr. John Dunlop, 
Rosefield; Mr. MacAdam, of Castledykes; Major 
Adair; Mr. Hannah, of Hannahfield; Major Davis; 
Mr. John Staig; the Provost and Magistrates, &c, 



BONNIE JEAN. 107 

&c. Eloquent prayers were put upon the occasion by 
the Reverend Messrs Wrightman, Fyffe, Dunlop, 
and Wallace; and after the usual forms had been 
observed, the coffin was placed on spokes, and borne 
by many to its final resting place. Throwing a stone 
to a chieftain's cairn was deemed an honour by our 
Celtic ancestors, and a similar feeling obviously pre- 
vailed in regard to the funeral obsequies of the Poet's 
widow. Before one person had well touched a spoke 
he was succeeded by another, eager to share in the 
same mournful duty; and although the distance was 
extremely short, several hundred hands bore the 
body along by shifting as frequently as St. Michael's 
bell tolled. Though the crowd was very dense, 
forests of heads were thrown into line as the proces- 
sion moved forward; every window was filled with 
spectators; numerous visitors were observed from 
the country; and altogether, the scene reminded 
many of the memorable day of the Poet's funeral. 
So great was the anxiety to enter the Mausoleum, 
that the pressure, in the first instance, occasioned a 
slight degree of confusion ; but in a minute or two 
order was restored, and the body lowered slowly and 
solemnly into the family vault. The chief mourn- 
ers then descended, took the stations assigned to 
them, and after everything had been adjusted, 
placed the coffin in a grave dug to the depth of four 
feet. Five relatives attended the interment, viz, 
Mr. Robert Burns, eldest son of the Poet, Mr. Rob- 
ert Armour, the widow's brother, and the husbands 
of three nieces, the Messrs Irving and Mr. M'Kin- 
nel. But there were other chief mourners, and 
among those we observed Mr. Dunlop, of South wick, 
Provost Murray, Dr. John Symons, Mr. Bogie, and 
Mr. M'Diarmid. The grave was covered in a brief 
space; the chief mourners then withdrew; and 



10S BONNIE JEAN. 

after every thing- foreign had been removed from 
the vault, the executors gave the necessary direc- 
tions for restoring the large stone which guards the 
entrance to the tomb of our great national poet. As 
this was a task of considerable labour, hours elapsed 
before it could be completed, and, in the interim, 
thousands had an opportunity of gratifying their 
curiosity by taking a parting look at the resting 
place of genius. 










BONNIE JEAN. 109 

BRAVE BONNIE JEAN. 



By Hon. Wallace Bruce. 



" Brave Bonnie Jean!" we love to tell 
The story from thy lips that fell ; 

The lengthened life which Heaven gave. 
Casts radiant twilight on his grave. 

A noble woman, strong to shield ; 

Her tender heart his trusty bield; 
The critic from her door- way turns 

With faith renewed and love for Burns. 

She knew as no one else could know 

The heavy burden of his woe ; 
The carking care, the wasting pain — 

Each welded link of misery's chain. 

She saw his early sky o'ercast, 

And gloomy shadows gathering fast ; 

His soul by bitter sorrow torn, 

And knew that " man was made to mourn. 

She heard him by the sounding shore 
Which speaks his name for evermore, 

And felt the anguish of his prayer : 
" Farewell, the bonnie banks of Ayr." 



no BONNIE JEAN. 

"OF A' THE AIRTS." 



By Robert Ford. 



Author of " Thistledown,'''' "■American Humorists " etc. 



No song - of Burns' has enjoyed greater public 
favor or will likely outlast in popularity this, one of 
the sweetest and most impassioned of all his glorious 
love lyrics. It was written in the midsummer of 
the year 1788, just when the poet had taken posses- 
sion of the farm of Ellisland, in Dumfries-shire, and 
was overseeing the erection of a new farm-house 
and offices there, previous to the reception of Jean 
Armour as his legalized wife. His own note to it is 
simply this: "The air is by Marshall; the song I 
composed out of compliment to Mrs. Burns. N. B. 
— It was during the honeymoon." Earlier in the 
same year he sent a fragment of song — " My Jean " 
— to Johnson's Museum, and that is worth quoting 
here. There is only one verse : — 

Tho' cruel fate should bid us part, 

Far as the pole and line — 
Her dear idea round my heart 

Should tenderly entwine. 
Tho' mountains rise and deserts howl, 

And oceans roar between — 
Yet, dearer than my deathless soul, 

I still would love my Jean. 

In these ruder, but not less impassioned, lines we 
discover the germ of the perfect lyric under com- 
ment. From the figure — 

Tho' mountains rise and deserts howl, 
And oceans roar between. 



BONNIE JEAN. in 

the step in improvement is brief to — 

There's wild woods grows and rivers row, 
And mony a hill between. 

And what follows these lines in either verse is not 
dissimilar in sentiment. The exact date of the song 
— "Of a' the Airts " — was presumably betwixt the 
12th and 22nd of June, while the poet was in his 
solitude on the banks of the Nith, and his Bonnie 
Jean was at Mossgiel — to quote his own words — 
" regularly and constantly apprenticed to my mother 
and sister in their dairy and other rural business," 
for about this time also he represents his favorite 
mare, "Jenny Geddes," as being homesick: — 

Jenny, my Pegascan pride, 
Dowie she saunters down Nithside, 
And aye a westlan' leuk she throws, 
While tears hap o'er her auld brown nose. 

The poet, too, is casting longing looks in the 
"westlan','' or, more strictly speaking, "north- 
westlan' airt," and his cry is — 

Of a' the airts the win' can blaw, 
I dearly like the west. 

But the song itself: — 

OF A' THE AIRTS. 

"Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 

I dearly like the west ; 
For there the bonnie lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best ; 
There's wild woods grow, and rivers row, 

And mony a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 

Is ever wi' my Jean. 



BONNIE JEAN. 



I see her in the dewy flowers, 

I see her sweet and fair : 
I see her in the tunefu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air ; 
There's not a bonnie flower, that springs, 

By fountain, shaw, or green ; 
There's not a bonnie bird that sings, 

But minds me o' my Jean." 

That is the song exactly as Burns wrote it ; though, 
in all the song-collections, other verses are added, 
and even these are differently phrased. Some 
editors, in bad taste, have printed " lo'e " in the 
second line instead of 'Mike," and nearly all have 
written — 

Though wild woods grow and rivers row, 
WV mony a hill between. 

With the second double stanza, still greater liberty 
has been taken ; but, I think, to the improvement of 
the song. Let the reader compare the above with 
the following: — 

I see her in the dewy flower, 

Sae lovely, sweet, and fair — 
I hear her voice in ilka bird, 

Wi' music charm the air ; 
There's not a bonnie flower that springs, 

By fountain, shaw, or green, — 
Nor yet a bonnie bird that sings, 

But minds me o' my Jean. 

The briefness of the song, too, has tempted some 
respectable versifiers to make additions to it, for the 
sixteen lines of the text just go once through the 
melody. Mr. William Reid, a late bookseller in 
Glasgow — an inveterate song-tinker, who tried his 
hand on the ' ; Lass o' Gowrie " and other popular 
measures — attempted a continuation. But Reid's 
lines, though frequently printed, are never sung. 
They are these : — 






BONNIE JEAN. 113 

Upon the banks o' flowing Clyde 

The lasses busk them braw ; 
But when their best they ha'e put on 

My Jeanie dings them a'. 
In hamely weeds she far exceeds 

The fairest o' the town — 
Eaith sage and gay confess it sae, 

Though drest in russet gown. 

The gamesome lamb, that sucks its dam, 

Mair harmless canna be ; 
She has nae faut, if sic 3^ ca't, 

Except her love for me. 
The sparkling dew, o' clearest hue, 

Is like her shining e'en — 
In shape and air, wha can compare 

Wi' my sweet, lovely Jean. 

Mr. John Hamilton of Edinburgh, author of " Up 
in the Morning Early," next made the attempt, and 
with much more success. His verses, in tendernes 
of feeling and beauty of imagery, are not inferior to 
those of Burns, although they may contain anach- 
ronisms, as Mr. Scott Douglas not unreasonably 
avers. Hamilton's addition, which is invariably 
sung, is as follows: — 

O blaw, ye westlan' winds, blaw saft, 

Amang the leafy trees — 
Wi' gentle gale, frae muir and dale, 

Bring hame the laden bees ; 
And bring the lassie back to me 

That's aye. sae neat and clean : 
A'e blink o' her wad banish care, 

Sae lovely is my Jean. 

What sighs and vows, amang the knowes, 

Ha'e pass'd atween us twa ! 
How fain to meet, how w r ae to part, 

That day she gaed awa ! 
The Powers aboon can only ken, 

To whom the heart is seen, 
That nane can be sae dear to me, 

As my sweet, lovely Jean. 



ii 4 BONNIE JEAN. 

These verses, says Mr. Scott Douglas, are very 
musical and expressive; but were, unfortunately, 
composed under the mistaken idea that the absence 
of Jean, referred to in Burns' song, was that of 
Spring, 1786, when she removed to Paisley to avoid 
him. On the poet's own authority, however, the 
date and the occasion of the song are rendered 
certain, and, at that time, instead of imploring the 
west winds to "bring the lassie back" to him, he 
had only to return to her ; and, moreover, she could 
not come "back " to Ellisland, where she had never 
yet been. 

Notwithstanding these anachronisms, it is no 
small compliment to Mr. Hamilton that Burns' own 
sixteen lines are now seldom dissociated from his 
imitator's supplementary ones. Cunningham boldly 
tells his readers that the whole thirty-two lines are 
from Burns' own mannscript; Lockhart quotes the 
added lines as the poet's own ; and Professor Wilson, 
in his famous " Essay," adopts Hamilton's addendum 
as an authentic part of the song. Its only weak line 
is — 

That's aye sae neat and clean — 

which is not poetical at all, and might read — 

Wi' her twa witchin' een — 

which is at once the language of love and poetry, 
and runs on a line with the rest of the sentiment. 



BONNIE JEAN. 115 

IEAN ARMOUR. 



A CHARACTER STUDY. 



By The Rev. William Lowestofft 



Among all the women who crossed the path of 
Robert Burns, among all those whom he singled out 
for the bestowal of his affection, among all those to 
whom he poured out the accents of love, no one 
stands out in bolder relief for having won the 
victory over his wayward heart than does Jean 
Armour. We say this with as full a knowledge of his 
life as more or less constant and diligent study and 
enquiry can give ; we say it with as clear a realiza- 
tion of the Clarinda interlude as it seems the facts 
warrant and with a more or less close study of the 
passages of which so many women in turn figured 
as the heroines. In his relation with "the sex" 
Robert Burns was not by any means a model of con- 
stancy. He soon tired of each succeeding flame 
and was ever eager to bask in new smiles. Having 
won a heart he seemed satisfied with victory and 
desired to add to his conquests and to his reputation 
as a gallant. No poet of whom we read, certainly 
no Scottish poet, had the lines of his life so often 
crossed by feminine charms, had the events of his 
career so shaped that through it all a woman starts 
up in one way or another as a controlling or degrad- 
ing influence, and yet, when we review that life 
story, laying aside mere frivolities and gallantries 
and pi atonic friendships and paltry bits of romance, 
and more or less conventional extravagances of 



n6 BONNIE JEAN. 

demeanor, we are forced to believe that there were 
but two women during the thirty-seven years of his 
life who completely held his heart and in their re- 
spective spheres reigned supreme — the mother 
whom he revered and the wife he loved. 

We say this, too, with a full knowledge of his sins 
against the moral law and the consequences thereof. 
These sins we cannot condone and the time for ex- 
planation and consideration has passed. The green 
grass has long waved over the Jenny Clows and 
Betty Parks and their offspring and they have long 
passed away from the judgments of men. Nor 
would we even refer to them here but for the fact 
that such acquaintances, such intimacies, had a more 
or less direct influence on the heart of the poet, and 
had more or less to do with shaping his career. But 
we do not believe they gave him more than a pass- 
ing thought, or had any influence whatever on his 
song. They undoubtedly did not elevate his ideas of 
human nature, especially female nature, nor did 
they enhance his sense of the dignity of the sex. 
But he was not foolish enough to believe from his 
knowledge of evil that all women were bad — that all 
were Jenny Clows. His knowledge of the weakness 
of the bad, the frail, the fallen, seemed rather to 
increase his admiration for the good and in that cat- 
egory, in spite of what had passed, he never failed 
to place — even in the dreary days of 1786 — she who 
had trusted him to her sorrow, she who afterwards 
became his acknowledged and lawful wife. 

And we also say this with a full study of the 
Highland Mary mystery — of the girl whom so many 
believe to be the real heroine of Burns's life, to whom 
in recognition of that sentiment many admirers — 
more or less silly — have erected a monument on the 
banks of the Clyde. Many writers of Burns's life have 



BONNIE JEAN. 117 

pretty fairly settled that Mary Campbell was a dairy- 
maid at Coilsfield and afterward a servant in the 
household of Gavin Hamilton, but others say she 
was not and are in doubt as to what she really was, 
Most of them describe her as a paragon of innocent 
virtue, some, however, more or less definately ex- 
press doubt on that point. Burns's story is really all 
that we have on which to base our knowledge of the 
girl, and that story is so contradictory and so full of 
inconsistencies that we would throw it aside alto- 
gether as a myth, were it not for the presence of the 
Bible which remains as a witness of the actuality of 
the love passages in the graceful monument on the 
banks of the Doon. 

But take it anyway we may, and we have viewed 
the matter from every conceivable standpoint, we 
cannot regard the Highland Mary incident as any 
other than simply one of the love passages in which 
the poet was engaged through his earlier life and 
into each of which he threw himself with all the in- 
tensity of his nature. He would have given Mary 
at the moment a stack of Bibles if she had asked for 
them and he had them to give, if thereby he could 
have proved the honesty of his intentions — for honest 
we believe him — for the time — to have been in all 
such intervals. We believe Mary very sincere in 
her love, and that she went from Ayrshire to her 
parents' home to prepare for her marriage. We do 
not believe that any woman ever lived, with the ex- 
ception of Clarinda, to whose heart the poet ever 
made siege who did not confess herself conquered, 
and even Clarinda was only retained from giving her 
hand and pledging her troth, by the knowledge that 
the law had set up a barrier between them which 
only death could sever. We see no reason for doubt- 
ing that Mary gave up her whole heart to Burns, but 



nS BONNIE JEAN. 

as for him, judging by his own record, she was no 
sooner out of his sight than he turned to bask in the 
sunshine of new smiles. Her sudden death brought 
her memory back again with irresistible force, but it 
was in reality that sudden death which made her 
memory immortal. The songs in which Burns has 
given her fame did not appear until long after, 
when all that was earthly in his passion had been 
purified by time, and her memory had been enhanced, 
etherialized, softened, and refined by absence, by a 
knowledge that she had passed from mortality and 
taken on the robes of immortality. But we cannot 
concede that Mary had any real influence on Robert 
Burns; so far as that was concerned she was little 
better than a lay figure in an artist's studio — the lay 
figure on which he drapes his costume and experi- 
ments with positions, and we do not doubt that the 
real figure which suggested the many songs — the 
real inspirer of the lyrics which have made her rank 
as a heroine of Scottish songs was his own wife, the 
one being who gave him any practical happiness in 
the meridian and gloaming of life, Jean Armour. 

On the surface there is little to tell of the life of 
" Bonnie Jean,'' as Jean Armour will be called until 
the art of love making is forgotten. She was born 
at Mauchline in 1765, was noted for her good looks, 
her shapely figure and sprightly conversation, was 
married to Robert Burns, whether in 1786 or 1788 
does not matter here, bore him many children, sur- 
vived him in widowhood for thirty-eight years and 
died in 1834 respected for her own sake, honored for 
the name she bore, and famous for the songs which 
had been written in her praise. 

Not much to write about truly, not more than 
could be said of millions of women, except for the 
last clause in the above paragraph, who have lived 



BONNIE JEAN. 119 

and died in the land of Robert Burns. Like them, too, 
she would have been content to have remained forgot- 
ten after the darkness set in. But the pre-eminence 
which he by his genius bestowed on all his kith and 
kin, aye even on all in more or less degree who 
crossed his pathway or journeyed with him even a 
short distance along the highway of life, has placed 
her on a pedestal and forced her into our thoughts. 
Her life has been studied by the enthusiasts and 
everything gleaned concerning her outgoings and 
incomings which it was possible for diligent enquiry 
— prurient as often as anything else — has been 
placed before us and we are able, as a result to get 
some sort of an idea of her character and of the 
amiable qualities of head and heart, which, as well 
as her personal charms, won for her the heart of 
the greatest of Scotia's bards. 

The story of that life is not without deep 
significance for women. Jean Armour, somehow 
the world does not seem to take kindly to the more 
formal designation of Mrs. Burns, was by no means 
a woman with a mission, she would have shrunk 
with native delicacy from even remote association 
with the shrieking sisterhood — the short haired 
women who in the company of long haired men are 
bellowing about the equality of the sexes and trying 
to bring about some new sort of an era — all in five 
minutes — on the face of the globe. But unconsciously 
she had a mission, and unconsciously her memory 
pleads in one respect at least for equality for her 
sisters with the sterner sex. 

In the usual acceptance of the world Jean " fell " 
before any form of marriage ceremony passed be- 
tween her and the poet. According to the general 
theory this involved her moral ruin, and upset any 
idea that might be entertained of her possessing any 



i2o BONNIE JEAN. 

regard for virtue, of her being' aught but a wanton. 
The certificate which she obtained from her lover, a 
sort of acknowledgment of her as his wife, did not 
alter the state of the case at all or even atone for the 
sin. Under such circumstances a young woman 
generally finds that her entire character is gone, her 
future life blasted, and the finger of levity or scorn 
is pointed at her, while the arm of the libertine is 
ever ready to encircle her and draw her still further 
from the moral highway. Whoever has read — and 
who has not ? — Hawthorne's magnificent study "The 
Scarlet Letter " can understand readily all that we 
mean, all that we imply in these lines. The world 
looked darkly at her; even her own people rebelled 
against her unjustly and her prudish sisters cast re- 
proachful glances at her as she passed. Defiantly 
the author of her misfortune wrote about the same 
time: 

Ye high exalted, virtuous dames 

Ty'd up in godly laces, 
Before ye gie poor Frailty names 

Suppose a change of places, 
A dear-lov'd lad, convenience snug 

A treacherous inclination, 
But let me whisper in your lug 

Ye're ailbins nae temptation. 

Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman ; 
Tho' they ma}- gang a kennin' wrang 

To step aside is human, 
One point must still be greatly dark 

The moving why they do it, 
And just as lanely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

It is commonly argued, and whether argued or not 
it is commonly held, that when a woman " makes a 
slip " as the saying goes — she is bound to fall beyond 



BONNIE JEAN. 121 

hope of recovery. Legally Jean Armour fell. She 
broke the laws of both kirk and state, but who with 
a knowledge of her life can ever accuse her of being 
au immoral woman, of being aught but a pure, 
trusting, loving heart. Did she even under the cir- 
cumstances violate a moral law ? That is a question 
we have often asked ourselves and been unable to 
clearly answer in the affirmative. 

Be it understood we are not condoning or defend- 
ing wantonness or licentiousness. We do not be- 
lieve there is a more loathsome sight in the world 
than a wanton, licentious woman, but who with a 
knowledge of Jean Armour's life can place such 
accusations at her door. Nay, we go further in our 
defence of her position in the evil days of 1786 and 
say that we believe that morally she never fell at all 
but that, trusting to her chosen lover, she accepted 
his promises, his protestations, blindly and impassion- 
ately, and that while she broke the laws by which 
society is regulated, she broke them not because she 
was a wanton, but because as a woman with a wooer 
like Robert Burns she could not help herself. 

So we take it that a mission might be cut out for 
Jean Armour and that mission might be stated to be 
an equality of the sexes as regards the condonation of 
moral wrongs. Her long, and but for this incident 
morally blameless life, her fidelity to her husband — 
a fidelity which was not reciprocal and of which the 
" misfortune " of Annie Park was, we fear only one 
instance. Remember in this we are not trying to 
show the poet's guilt — there is no use considering this 
— it is all past and gone — but we merely bring up a 
perfectly reliable and acknowledged instance to prove 
that Jean preserved the moral amenities when her 
own husband showed, without any attempt appar- 
ently at concealment, that the vows of matrimony 



122 BONNIE JEAN. 

did not circumscribe his conduct or be to him a 
moral shield. But Jean was loyal to Burns from the 
day she met him first, whether when bleaching claes 
on the green at Mauchline or at a penny wedding, 
until her body was laid beside his in the mansoleum 
which his countrymen, his admirers, had erected in 
auld St. Michael's Churchyard to guard his honored 
dust. 

Jean Armour loved the poet from the first with all 
the love which a woman can give a man, during 
their married life at Ellisland and in ki the Dark 
Days of Dumfries." In spite of trials and offences 
not one or two, but oft repeated, offences which 
would try, which have tried and broken, the temper, 
the fidelity, the love, even the character of thousands 
of women, she still held to her love, condoned his 
offenses, thought as lightly as was possible over his 
transgressions and did what she could to "make a 
happy fireside clime." So far as we have read no 
word of reproach ever escaped her lips, she did not 
storm, or rave, at faults or follies, at the idea of 
facing poverty, at seeing the family fortunes steadily 
going down, nor did she lose heart when it was seen 
that the end was surely coming and her husband was 
entering on that contest in which all must surrender 
— the contest with the grim conqueror. Her love, 
her faith, in his genuine goodness never wavered and 
when critics and biographers and literary hyenas of all 
sorts were hounding his memory, raking up all the 
gossip — vile and paltry and generally exaggerated if 
not altogether untrue — which the "clash" of a country 
town can furnish, her voice was never uttered but 
in praise, and his conduct as a husband and father 
elicited from her nothing but words of grateful 
commendation. She understood her husband better 
than did the critics and hvenas and knew what he had 



BONNIE JEAN. 123 

to contend against — physically and mentally, better 
than they and was able to give a clearer opinion as 
to his moral worth. She understood clearer than 
they the full import of the bard's lines in the poem 
from which we have already quoted: 

" Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us ; 
He knows each chord its various tone. 

Each spring its various bias. 
Then at the balance let's be mute 

We never can adjust it, 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted." 

Then her long- blameless widowhood, her humble 
yet wholly successful effort to bring- up her family 
so that they might make their way in the world to 
higher social spheres than that in which she had 
moved, her regard for the reputation of the bard, 
her constant work of charity, her religious faith, all 
point to her as a woman in whom the beauty of the 
moral law was conspicuous. She observed all the 
proprieties of life, she circumscribed her conduct so 
that not a whisper could be raised even by envy — 
and all little country towns are full of that — and she 
earned, well earned, the reputation of being a good 
woman, a lovable woman, a charitable woman, one 
who was constantly, daily, engaged in laying up 
treasures in heaven. 

And yet, once, she had what the world called 
fallen, and the finger of scorn was pointed at her for 
her offence. Surely if an erring woman desiies to 
retain hope, desires to understand how it is possible 
to outlive a fault, how it is possible for a woman to 
be led into folly and yet retain her own self respect 
and by her own behavior make even the world con- 
done or forget her error, she can find not only an 



124 BONNIE JEAN. 

ample, but an influence in thinking- over the career 
of Bonnie Jean and recalling the glorious golden 
sunset of life after a gloomy spring time. Rightly 
understood, we take it, Jean Armour, while not a 
woman with a mission, did actually perform a mis- 
sion and left a legacy to her sisters, as important, as 
full of hope, as comforting in its way as that which 
her gifted husband left to mankind. 

There is another phase in which the career of 
Jean Armour is of deep interest and that is in its 
unconscious intellectual growth. In this respect in 
fact, she is a representative type of her country- 
women in her own rank of life and a type wliich still 
exists even although education is much more thorough 
a factor in the county districts of Scotland than it 
was in her girlhood days. Practically she was un- 
educated. She could read a little, very little. It is 
doubtful if she could write. She was not, in early 
life at all events, at all fond even of what we call 
improving the mind. Yet she had a retentive mem- 
ory, a sweet voice, a native shrewdness and a degree 
of quick-wittedness which enabled her to readily 
understand v/hatever subject was discussed in her 
presence and to appreciate her own shortcoming. 
She knew all the legends of the countryside in which 
she had her home, she was aquainted with the words 
and airs of every scrap of song and ballad which 
floated around the village, and her ability as a 
dancer gave her a carriage and a presence which, in 
addition to her good looks, captured more hearts 
than that of Rob Mossgiel. The manufacture of 
rhyme, the technicalities of feet and measure were 
to her mysteries as profound, if not more so than 
those of a mason's lodge, and yet when her husband 
wanted the voice of an hcnest critic over some piece 
of literary work he submitted the production to her 



BONNIE JEAN. 125 

judgment and invariably profited by it. Her pract- 
ical ideas were a good antidote to his theoretical 
notions. Ke said himself "If I have not got polite 
tattle, modish manners and fashionable dress, I am 
not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse 
of boarding school affectation. I have got the hand- 
somest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest 
constitution and the kindest heart in the country." 

Doubtless from the time she went to Ellisland and 
became mistress of her own home Jean's character 
mellowed, her knowledge of the world around her 
widened and her opportunities for mental improve- 
ment increased and she took full advantage of her 
position. We do not learn that she devoted herself to 
books, indeed we have evidence that her one book 
was the Bible, with now and then, perhaps, a glance 
through some volume bearing her husband's name. 
But most of his songs she knew by heart and when 
she sung them, or crooned them over as she went 
about her household duties she delighted his heart 
more than though her voice had been that of the 
most accomplished prima donna, because, somehow, 
in her singing she evolved the very sentiment, the 
pith, the full meaning of the song. 

To the end of her career, Jean Armour owned 
nothing intellectually to books, yet who would, even 
in these modern days describe her as an ignorant 
woman. Her tact enabled her to conceal her short- 
comings, her manner threw in the background any 
mistake in speech she might make, any misunder- 
standing of a particular subject, and any little break 
of etiquette of which she might be guilty. No one 
of course could be associated with Burns and not 
feel the influence of his genius, and we almost fancy 
that Jean with a woman's adaptability soon acquired 
his sense of taste in poetry, his aspirations for good 



126 BONNIE JEAN. 

— and rejected with her finer instincts and purer ideas 
all that was gross and earthly. Her retentive mem- 
ory gave her the mastery of any subject which 
was once discussed in her presence, her clear per- 
ception of right and wrong led her to a just de- 
cision on any topic and her shrewd common sense 
supplied the rest. 

During her long widowhood her home was invaded 
by inquisitive strangers of all sorts, some on errands 
which commanded her sympathy, others with mis- 
sions which, as they related to her husband's memory 
required all her tact, and others whose only purpose 
was idle curiosity and who filled her with contempt 
— contempt w T hich however she rarely showed. 
These visitors were of all classes and conditions of 
men and women, and their conversation naturally 
ranged from technical to commonplace, and yet we 
cannot recall one instance when a visitor has left on 
record any impressisn that he regarded Jean Armour 
as an ignorant woman. She met her visitors on 
their own level, apparently without effort, without 
affectation, and charmed them all. The Marchioness 
of Hastings, not only was delighted with her, but 
told her son to remember the interview with Mrs. 
Burns as an honor, — which he did. The landed 
gentry were interested in her and she met them on 
an even footing, whether they came to her home or 
she met them accidently as she moved through the 
streets of Dumfries. Every clergyman in the town 
held her in the highest esteem and none regarded 
her as a woman whose education had been neglected 
or one to whom it was necessary to ' ' speak down to 
her level" as the professional phrase goes. Of her 
husband she spoke without extravagance, defending 
his memory in her quiet but effective way from its 
detractors great and small; of her family she was 



BONNIE JEAN. 127 

proud and she saw them — or some of them — make 
their wa}' in the world in a manner that would have de- 
lighted their father — winning praises on all sides for 
their good qualities, and giving her substantial 
evidence of their reverence and their love. 

A country girl without book learning, a widowed 
matron, mingling we might say in all classes and 
"keeping up her own end " in any conversation, in 
any society, can we consider the widow of Robert 
Barns an ignorant woman ? Surely not. Her life 
shows that even the three r's are, after all but a 
foundation, and that with native wit, by taking ad- 
vantage of all other opportunities, a superstructure 
of knowledge may be raised without their aid. True 
the superstructure is not so solid as it might be with 
their help ; true, the absence of their aid is to be ever 
deplored, but if we can learn anything from Jean 
Armour's career it is that their aid is not indispens- 
able to the sphere in which the poet's wife, in poverty 
or affluence, confined herself — that of a busy, kindly 
country housewife. She would not have been any 
better for having had the foundation, she might with 
it and reached into realms of which she had no ken, 
but she supplied their want by her own wit and 
probably when she died had a fund of knowledge 
equal to any woman of her class in the three 
kingdoms. 

At times we hear men being rated as uneducated 
if they have not passed, no matter how slovenly, 
through a college curriculum, and a young woman 
is still spoken of as uneducated if she cannot work 
out a problem of Euclid or construe a few lines 
from Thucydides. To be "educated" she must 
speak French — or be able to make a bluff at it — turn 
out wonderful effects in ribbon and lace and paint — 
heaven save the mark — jars and jugs and crockery 



128 BONNIE JEAN. 

of all sorts. No matter if the man thus blessed 
knows at the end of his career little more than to 
kick a football, or the girl barely enough to cement 
a bit of crystal. They are "educated." However, 
a new era is dawning and education — as simply a 
preparation for life is being better understood and 
the boy or girl graduating from the Grammar school, 
if they but use the foundation then acquired aright 
can force the world to acknowledge them as being 
educated men and women. 

So Jean Armour, with no deeper foundation than 
that which permitted her in early life to read her 
Bible, passed through her long career not only with- 
out calling attention to her lack of 4t book learning " 
but with the reputation for being the very reverse of 
ignorant. We do not despise education, far from it, 
but the story of Jean Armour illustrates one fact 
often — invariably — overlooked — that primary educa- 
tion is simply a means to an end, and that end, can 
be reached by the exercise of that art, shrewdness, 
and natural curiosity which are our heritage from 
nature. 



BONNIE JEAN. 129 

TO ROBERT BURNS. 



By Dr. Benjamin F. Leggett 



O peasant Bard whose sweet voice stirs 

The heather of the hills ; 
How far and wide thy song has flown — 

How every measure thrills ! 

Thy name is dear to Scotia's land, 

She will not let it die : 
The daisy prints it on the ground, — 

The laverock on the sky. 

The cottar in his ingle-neuk, 

The gowan on the brae, 
They keep thy fame so tenderly 

It cannot pass away. 

Not less of tender love for thee, 
Holds every heart that turns, 

To greet, with loyal homage due, 
Thy Bonnie Jean, — O Burns! 

Her eyes for thee held starry hope 
To cheer thy darkest dream, — 

With light she rilled thy humble home- 
The light of love supreme. 

Thou hast no need of measured line 
To keep thy memory green ; — 

One sang for loyal womanhood — 
Thy guid wife — Bonnie Jean ! 



i 3 o BONNIE JEAN. 

THE POET AND HIS WIFE. 



By Rev. Arthur John Lockhart. 
" Pastor Felix." 



As we ask again for the singing of some old song, 
which has gathered to its perfect heart the loves and 
joys and sorrows of a hundred generations; or, as we 
listen again to the telling of some sweet story that 
makes its unchanging appeal to our affections, 
though rehearsed a thousand times, while the familiar 
recital " wearies not ever;" — so we are never tired 
of listening to the romantic, yet deeply-human, his- 
tory of Robert Burns, — who, in the heart's matters, 
is "all mankind's epitome." Currie may tell it, and 
we are no less ready to listen to Cunningham ; Lock- 
hart's recital but whets our appetite for Carlyle ; we 
rise up from Professor Nichol or Robert Chambers to 
sit down expectant and eager when the next one is 
ready to tell the story in his own way. The spirits 
of envy and disapprobation seem half disarmed; 
and we grudge our praise no more than we do our 
smiles when some lovely child has come within the 
sphere of our vision. 

Burns was more than a poet potentially, but one 
by actual and noble accomplishment, before he met 
the woman of whom he could say, — "my Jean," — 
the companion of his few bitter years — the drop of 
wine and honey in his gall; but Scotland and the 
world did not yet know it, — only the little world of 
his intimates at Mossgiel,at Mauchline and Tarbolton. 
The buds of song had been folded in the babe at 
Alloway, but they were now buds no longer. The 
wild rose hedges on Doon's green banks are not more 



BONNIE JEAN. 131 

full of birds and blossoms in their time than was 
his heart with broad-blown melodies; and some of 
the sweetest the world will not let die had already- 
been scrawled by that heavy hand, furtively and 
hastily, in that rough garret at Lochlea, and hidden 
in the deal desk. He was not like some of us, who 
have to sit on a green bank by a running stream and 
dream we are poets, — never ceasing to wish we could 
be, and trying again and again to persuade ourselves 
and the world that we are, while the world will not 
heed us, and, for the most part, we doubt ourselves. 
He rose up, half in a maze of wonder, shook his 
locks, and without speculation, put forth power. 
The harp of Scotland was not hung- up out of his 
reach ; and when he took it down he did not pick a 
random chord with hap-hazard fingers, but swept 
them all like the master he was; the listeners were 
all thrilled as he plucked a living soul out of every 
wire. With what grace Raphael painted and Moz- 
art composed, with the like grace Burns gave us his 
memorable poesy. Long ago he had tasted love, 
and knew its sweetness and its sharpness, its power 
to " wreck his peace,'-' and to renew its enchantment, 
as charmer after charmer passed before him. Love 
and music consented together with him, and the 
genius of his life appeared in company with "lovely 
Nell," and setting suns, and autumnal moonlight in 
the barley-field. 

Jean Armour rose, a star above the cloudy days at 
Mossgiel ; and, though she disappeared again for a 
season, she emerged low on the horizon of home, 
where she lingered ; and only by the wrack of death 
that enveloped him was he ever again bereaved of 
her presence. Let us recur to the pleasant story of 
their first meeting. A Scottish merry-making, as 
the poet tells us, was often the scene where that soft 



i 3 2 BONNIE JEAN. 

flame, which may burn well or ill, has its beginning - . 
It was at such a one, when Mauchline fair was held, 
that the die was cast for him. On the race day the 
house of entertainment became an open court of 
pleasure, and he who would freely came with his 
favorite lass, without cost, withal, — unless it be the 
cost of his heart, and a penny contribution to the 
fiddler. Burns came that day, with his companion, 
who hung not on his arm, but ran at his heels. 
When I read Joanna Baillie's song, — 

" Saw ye Johnnie comin' ? said she ; 

" Saw ye Johnnie comin' ? 
Wi' his blue bonnet on his head 

And his doggie rinnin', — 

I think of lonesome Robin, with his dumb and over- 
fond companion. But Jean was there, with eyes 
already bent upon him, and ears quickened at his 
words. Though old father Armour will listen un- 
moved to the song's petition — 

" Fee him, faith er, fee him," 

yet the heart of a woman goeth whither it will, and, 
while her lips protest, her look surrenders. Robert's 
dog at his heels through the round of every dance, 
became the occasion of some mirthful glances and 
some poking of fun at the poet, to whose proud 
spirit even such light banter was never very agree- 
able. But he, who was never behindhand with his 
rejoinder, expressed a wish that he could find in some 
lassie his dog's peer in affectionate fidelity, — a wish 
Jean overheard, and which in her heart, perhaps 
at a later time, she determined to gratify. 

If there is a romantic attractiveness in the story 
of the poet's meeting with Highland Mary on that 



BONNIE JEAN. 133 

blissful day in Montgomerie's woods, — an attractive- 
ness like that of the old ballad, made we know not 
by whom, — 

" When shaws beene sheene, and shradds full fayre, 
And leeves both large and longe ; — 

there is likewise a beguiling touch of homely poetry, 
befitting Jean Armour's character, in his next meet- 
ing with her, only a day or two after the evening at 
the inn at Mauchline, where — 

" To the trembling string 
The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha' ;" 

and where, though we are told she did not join with 
him, we would not dare to pronounce her averse to 
it. The summer air breathed on her sweet cheek as 
she stood on the grr-een where her linen lay bleach- 
ing, and the summer sunlight fell on her fine brow 
and fair locks, when along came Robin from the 
riverside, gun in hand, — to find game no such 
weapon could bring down. The hare, and the 
mousie, and the water-fowl on Loch Turit, having 
nothing to fear, the lassies, that may be slain by 
arrows from the bow of his eyes, may beware 
accordingly. If Robert is in dowie mood he sud- 
denly gladdens at the sight of the sonsie brunette, 
and thanks his dog for a confab, and a chance to 
stand at gaze. Jean is not inclined to allow dirty 
tracks on her clean linen, and is petulant as any nice 
house-body might be at the prospect of such defile- 
ment. So doggie gets a stone hurled at his head, 
and his owner hears a peremptory summons to call 
him off. But when the poet draws near, and she 
comes under the spell of that tongue so like "a 
silver lute, " her look and tone soften, and she slyly 
asks him if yet he had found a lass to love him. 



i 3 4 BONNIE JEAN. 

Then, I can think, these words had pathos: " Las- 
sie, if ye thocht ocht o' me, ye wadna hurt my dog." 
Jean's unspoken comment, — "I wadna think much o' 
you, at onyrate," — must have belied her heart. It 
was the hasty defiance from the commander of a 
poorly garrisoned fortress on the evening before 
surrender. 

Now soon can that hopeful and gratified lover 
break out in song over the daughter of the master 
mason of Mauchline, — 

11 A dancin', sweet, young handsome queen 
Of guiless heart." 

Alas, for Jean! who surrendered too easily, and re- 
turned the poet's love with too much abandon ; better 
had she been frugal, where he was so lavish, to re- 
serve her gifts. Too soon for both of them did 
" sweet affection prove the spring of woe." In brief 
time the lassie lets tears fall upon her pillow, and 
Robin has a secret in his breast he " daurna tell to 
ony," — nay, will not even venture to whisper to the 
muse, so ready to condone our faults and compas- 
sionate our sorrows. But the day of revealment 
must come, and the blush burn the cheek of mother 
and sister, over at Mossgiel. He thinks of the woe 
that waits on Jean, of the dismay of her family, and 
of the world's pointed finger. Poor bard! hardly 
beset by the nemesis of his own seven-times heated 
passions, he makes the best reparation he can. He 
is not base to desert her whom still he loves, nor to 
cast off the babe whose coming brings dishonor, but 
is ready with a written testimonial that she is his 
wedded wife, though the marriage be ' ' secret and 
irregular." Whether the blessing or banning of 
church and society be his, he is ready to claim her 
as his own, and shield her from scorn and malediction. 



BONNIE JEAN. 135 

But a sad surprise awaits him. The sturdy mason 
of Mauchline, who is not highly gifted with pity or 
magnanimity, peremtorily excludes him. He will 
accept the shame he has entailed, if it must be, but 
he will by no means accept him to be a son-in-law. 
The canny, prudent man, who looks well to the 
honor of his family, is roused at last. There is a 
stormy scene in the house, and he is white with rage. 
In his fury he denounced " the rake-helly Burns," — 
of whom he wanted nothing but the chance to lay 
hands on him, — and demanded that his daughter re- 
linquish him forever. Scorn, contempt and indigna- 
tion made the sorrowing man their target. Why 
was such a villain permitted to cumber the earth! 
So was the poet pursued, — "skulking," as he de- 
clares, day after day, "from covert to covert, under 
the terrors of a jail," while 

" Hungry ruin had him in the wind." 

The righteousness of men in Scotland once sent 
them to "the munitions of rocks," with the sword 
of Claverhouse behind them ; but now Caledon's 
sweetest singer, who, like another hill-hunted min- 
strel, had reason to cry. — " I am a sinful man, O, 
Lord," is driven in the tracks of the Cameronians, 
and seeks refuge in Grampian glens from the pursu- 
ing sheriff. As for Armour, he can still care for his 
daughter. He bids her burn to ashes the precious 
paper that might show Burns to have any legal claim 
upon her. So easy-hearted Jean submits, is with- 
drawn within the privacy of home, while Burns has 
reason to suppose the gate so firmly barred he may 
come to her no more. 

Here, was it a ray of heavenly light, or flame of 
earthly passion, that shot across the background of 
this accumulated shadow and disorder, in the ro- 



136 BONNIE JEAN. 

mantic episode of Highland Mary ? We cannot 
pause to trace the event, to delineate her features, 
vaguely seen, to reconcile what is perhaps the irrecon- 
cilable, so as, on the moral basis of society, to justify 
her or her lover. Enough to affirm, it was an event 
of which poetry could be made; and, whatever she 
was in sober fact, we see her only through the misty 
gold of song; for, in the haunted region where the 
poet's fancy has placed her, consecrated by his 
yearning, adoring, affectionate regret, she is forever 
beautiful and fair, beyond earth and time and the 
touch of contamination. 

Mary being gone, Jean snatched from him, and 
with the scourge of society at his back, the unhappy 
bard meditates flight from his native country. He 
craves the remembrance of his companions at Tar- 
bolton, — 

" Dear brethren of the mystic tie," — 

when he is afar. He goes over the moors at even- 
ing, singing his farewell song to Caledonia, in 
musical memory, 

" Pursuing past unhappy loves." 

Already a tossing world of waters is in his eye, and 
the doom of that "fatal, deadly shore," — which, 
please Heaven, he shall never see! Fancy Robert 
Burns, the Poet of Freedom, a slave-driver at the 
line! If Moore's soul was vexed by the lazy Ber- 
mudian solitude, what uneasy soul will fret itself 
away from Jamaica, should he ever live to reach it! 
Let such a business, in such a climate, be delegated 
to Mr. M'Lehose; and Burns will be better off rid- 
ing over Ayrshire hills and Gal way moors, " search- 
ing auld wives' barrels." His heart, at least, is at 
home. We kiss acrain the hand of Fate — dealer of 



BONNIE JEAN. 137 

so many untoward thing's — and bless the propriety 
of that combination of circumstances which saved 
him from so palpable an absurdity. 

But how near lie came to taking the step! He 
went so far as to engage his passage in the steerage 
of a vessel soon to leave the Clyde. But before he 
can do this he must be "master of nine guineas." 
And where shall he get "nine guineas ?" Poetry is 
sometimes a golden lode, but not always. But 
Burns has friends, who advise him to collect and 
publish his poems, and who will subscribe liberally; 
so "Wee Johnnie" of Kilmarnock is engaged to 
print six hundred precious copies, that with the prod- 
uct thereof Scotland's greatest poet may be able to 
go and bury himself! But that book became the 
step-ladder to Fame. Coila was there at the poet's 
shoulder and motioned him to ascend. Drummond, 
Dunbar, Ramsay, Fergusson, — you have done your 
best; but never book of yours was like this one, 
done at Kilmarnock! Like fire among whin bushes 
or dry heather on the moors, so spread the flame his 
genius had enkindled. His was at once a song of 
such repute that the lady in her castle, the minister 
in his manse, the philosopher and literateur in his 
study, the herdsman and ploughman on the hills, 
the servant girl in the kitchen, — all, and all classes, 
seized eagerly on that wonderful book, thankful to 
get it at three shillings, — and to pore upon it, for- 
getful of all else, by the hour. What next? Of 
course he shall hear from good and worthy Dr. 
Blacklock! Of course farewells are taken back, 
"old Coila's hills and dales" reclaim him, while 
mounted on a steed furnished at his hand, and en 
route to Edinburgh, his is a triumphal progress all 
the way! 

We might dwell on his astonishing career in that 



138 BONNIE JEAN. 

city, but Jean does not figure there. She is in hu- 
miliation and obscurity. Meanwhile her lover, for a 
time, seems to cast a lustre on the street as he walks, 
and the young- Jeffreys of the time are gazing after 
him. He sits with the magnates and drains their 
wine, while they beam upon the prodigy; and when 
he opens his lips in speech or song they behold their 
own Scotland, as Mirza beheld the valley of Bagdat 
when enchanted by the presence of the genius. 
Alas! when he was gone they were drinkers, and 
diners, and hunters, and kneader's of common clay, 
just the same! Then, the glamor gone, the gold 
dimmed, — his fine eyes and bold, bright speech no 
longer a novelty, — he may retreat a social step or 
two, and finally subside to the pothouse; since, in 
their view, he seems to have for that station some 
affinity. And what is our station in life? Is it not 
that whereunto we are born, or into which we are 
cast, sometimes with little respect to our fitness 
therefor ? But for the pothouse, which caught the 
shimmer of his matchless verse, would that that 
open door to death had been closed to him, and that 
the rich and great had beguiled him away from the 
place where his self control was broken down. He 
was bowing with the weary burden of a youth that 
had wrenched his nerves and stooped his shoulders; 
and what heavyweights, alas! each successive year 
should lay there ! We sorrow to think how his life 
was preyed upon and frittered away. Are our breth- 
ren of the flesh set thus to waste us? Is it true, as 
the wise Goethe said, that we must be either sledge 
or anvil? Must creation be abolished, indeed, before 
that part of it that preys upon the other can be done 
away? It is a disheartening question, if we wait for 
the answer. 

Clarinda, the new "mistress of his soul," over 






BONNIE JEAN. 139 

whom he languished in Edinburgh — another of his 
half ideal and wholly mistaken loves — cannot detain 
us. Whatever may be said of the real depth and 
sincerity of that attachment on the poet's part, (the 
devotion of poor Agnes cannot be dubious,) it occa- 
sioned that singular self-revelation of the weakness 
and strength of Burns, read nowhere so clearly as in 
the "Sylvander" letters; — yea, and moreover, some 
of the sweetest, saddest songs in any language, — 
notably that one concerning which Scott declared 
that four lines of it "contained the essence of a 
thousand love-tales." Burns, destined to immor- 
tality and the tomb; Agnes, with her voluptuous 
beauty, to wear into wrinkled age, and to make the 
tearful record of the sixth December, 1831, — "This 
day I never can forget. Parted with Robert Burns 
in the year 1791, never more to meet in this world. 
Oh, may we meet in heaven!" Amen! Love there 
may be no wrong. 

Think you that must have been a proud, if not, a 
glad day, when the young man — who had carried 
duchesses off their feet by the stroke of his eloquent 
lips, and turned their heads with his unlacquered 
brilliancy — set his face away from the city, where he 
had gathered and worn his ripest laurels, toward 
that cottage of the west where those who loved him 
still struggled with their poverty? Not prouder will 
he be to greet them all, than will be that fond, 
forgiving mother — on whose knee sits the little 
daughter whose coming had been with shadow — to 
see her boy again, with the smiles of Edinburgh yet 
reflected from his face. God bless that mother's 
memory! Untroubled be her rest in the churchyard 
at Bolton, in the vale of Tyne, who sung the music 
into her poet's soul, and who should now be sleeping 
by the side of William Burness, near the old kirk of 



i4o BONNIE JEAN. 

Alloway. But Burns, with his five hundred pounds 
sterling from publisher Creech, may come home to 
Mossgiel and help to lift Gilbert's burdens, and give 
cheer to all about him; — for what a change to his 
worldly affairs and prospects the past few months 
have brought ! 

The same stroke of fortune that brought him com- 
petence and fame, put him in popular favor at 
home, blotted out all wrongs, and restored to him 
his Jean, — whom all the while he loved, and whom 
he now married in right good earnest! Armour is 
now complacent and interposes no barrier. And 
quite human and natural it was, doubtless, as Stod- 
dard regards it, for Armour now to open his door, to 
give him his hand, and permit Jean to act her 
pleasure. We are not unwilling to see Demos pla- 
cated by some borrowed regard for the singing- 
shepherds, and the course of true love, so coldly 
checked, running free and smooth again. Wrath 
cannot burn forever in a stone-mason's bosom ; and, 
after all, is not Burns, penitent, and impecunious, a 
scandal to the country-side, stealing kisses and mak- 
ing mock marriages, one sort of person; and Burns, 
triumphant, belauded, independent and replenished, 
quite another? Certainly! At least nine out of 
every ten persons will think so, when they come to 
the question of marrying and giving in marriage. 

Now we come to that era in the life of Burns the 
contemplation of which has always given us the 
highest pleasure, and which, on the whole, we re- 
gard as the happiest, noblest, and most hopeful, the 
poet was ever to know\ He had written his domestic 
philosophy in four memorable lines, — 

" To make a happy fireside clime 

For weans and wife — 
That's the true pathos and sublime 

Of human life; — " 






BONNIE JEAN. 141 

and we honor him for his heroic attempt to realize 
this in actual experience, though the struggle ended 
in partial defeat. Well for him could a modicum of 
useful dullness, — the ballast of a nature like Words- 
worth's — have been infused into him. The cup of 
his delight must needs be foaming at the brim, or 
lying insipid in the lees. He knew no middle course. 
Dullness was like lead upon his spirits, and if mirth 
and wit and wisdom were not at the flood, (putting 
aside all other distresses,) then 

" He could lie down like a tired child, 
And weep away this life of care," 

that had him chained, at once as Fortune's pet and 
victim. 

Yet, with some of the joy of his new-found love, 
and the light of his young fame, about him, we fol- 
low him to Ellisland, on the Nith, where Lord Dals- 
winton has leased him a farm, and where, if he is to 
cherish a wife and bring up children, he must set 
about rearing a home. We see him here, as we see 
the flowers at dawn, and hear him as we hear the 
birds at the sun-rising. He treads the fields he can 
almost call his own, and accumulates rock and lime, 
and other materials, to build his cottage. What 
matters now that his own head is sheltered by a 
hovel, and that no smiling cook caters to his appetite, 
won from the fresh-turned mould and the caller air ! 
He has come home to nature again, to love and song, 
— and wherefor not to content? He has come back 
to the " gay green birk " and the blossoming haw- 
thorn, the wildbrier rose, the fox glove, the hare 
bell, and the mountain daisy, he loved so well; — 
back where he can hear again "the loud solitary 
whistle of the curlew in summer noon, or the wild 
mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover in an 



142 BONNIE JEAN. 

autumnal morning-." We see him standing with the 
muse in the midst of his fair acres, and around him 
the Whitsuntide birds are singing, and down below 
the green and woody bank the clear Nith waters go 
rippling on with a melody like that waking in his 
own heart. We see him, mounted on horseback, 
thridding the dale, through which the river flows, to 
Dumfries ; or speeding over the hills to Ayrshire, for 
a glimpse at Jean and the folks; or directing his 
plough along the furrowed slope ; or working at his 
cottage, which stands at this day, in part the work 
of his hands; "or with a white sheet containing his 
seed corn, slung across his shoulders, striding with 
measured steps along his turned-up furrows, and 
scattering the grain in the earth;" or, "pursuing the 
defaulters of the revenue, among the hills and vales 
of Nithside, his roving eye wandering over the 
charms of nature, and muttering his wayward 
fancies as he moves along," His muse, long bound 
with the silken fetters of Edinburgh, was now liber- 
ated, to sing a clearer, blither carol, — a song one 
never hears but his heart leaps up, as Wordsworth 
declared his did, when he beheld "a rainbow in the 
sky." 

Yes, happy he was here, if poet such as he can 
ever be happy. Jean has come at autumntide; their 
housekeeping is set up, and the children, who had 
been their sorrow, have already begun to comfort 
them. Burns teaches them the catechism, and tries 
to be a good father to them, as he remembers one who 
once was such to him. Even 

" The big ha-Bible, ance his father's pride," 

is sometimes opened, and used devoutly, as in that 
home where he was in the place of an elder son after 
that sire had gone. Jenny Geddes, " the auld mare," 



BONNIE JEAN. 143 

will not need so often to carry him "over the Cum- 
nock hills," for the lode-star that drew him to Ayr- 
shire is in Nithsdale now. The new "biggin" be- 
ing ready, they went into it. On the day when the 
new abode was to be christened, Burns, who "de- 
lighted to keep up the old-world freits or usages," 
bade Betty Smith, the servant, "take a bowl of salt, 
and place the family Bible on the top of it, and, 
bearing these, walk first into the new house and 
possess it," while "he himself, with his wife on his 
arm, followed Betty and the Bible and the salt, and 
so entered their new abode." 

But, even in this retirement, and amid the soli- 
tudes of his favorite country, great despairs and dis- 
gusts came over him. Sometimes duchesses and 
lords and the elite of Edinburgh walked in his 
vision, and the mirth of gilded tables rang in his 
ears. Then the humble peasantry of whom he 
came, — the "hardy sons of rustic toil," the sight of 
whose smoking firesides in the quiet gloaming filled 
his eyes with benignant tears and his heart with 
blessings, dwindled in his eyes to ignorant churls, 
unfit for his association. "The only things," he 
said, in some such mood, to Bengo, the engraver, 
1 ' that are to be found in this country in any degree 
of perfection are stupidity and canting." What to 
them was Coila's laureate in comparison with the 
steady-going farmer, who attended to his fields, and 
kept his accounts straight? "Prose," he declared, 
" they only knew in graces and sermons, which they 
valued, like plaiding webs, by the ell ; while a poet 
and a rhinoceros suggested ideas equally distinct 
and agreeable." The fact is, his farming did not 
prosper ; only poetry and the excise turned out well. 
It seemed that nature, who had given him the har- 
vest of the eye and heart, had consistently denied 



144 BONNIE JEAN. 

him any other out of her fields ; for why should even 
a poet have everything? How hard is this rural ex- 
istence to dignify and adorn ! Horace and Cowley 
had tried and praised it; but they had never tried to 
dig out a living and pay rent from the wet clay of 
Ellisland. "Dr. Moore had mentioned the friendli- 
ness of husbandry to fancy, while he wished for him 
the prosperous union of the farmer and the poet. 
But Burns had neither Maecenas for a landlord nor 
Horace for a neighbor. " But he gave the tribute of a 
glowing admiration to such small poets as the country 
then furnished. It seems as if an astral lamp bowed 
to the tallow candles. 

Dear Ellisland ! First home of Robert Burns, and 
his wedded Jean, we love to linger with you! Here 
he exulted in song, as husband never exulted before: 

" By night, by day, a-field, at hame, 
The thoughts o'thee my breast inflame ; 

And aye I muse and sing thy name — 
I only live to love thee." 

You seem to feel the leap of the warm blood in that 
verse; you seem to hear the rollic rapture of a bob- 
link, dancing on a spray, in the eye of his mate. 
The stately epithalmiums of the poets are diminished 
before it. Dear Ellisland ! the poet's sanctuary and 
refuge, his best bower of song, — why came that sad 
necessity of leaving you? What though he rode 
through ten parishes his weekly two hundred miles ; 
he was back to Jean again, and the worst that came 
here was better than the dull misery of Mossgiel. 
Was it good to give up the cozy cottage his own 
hands had builded, and the " hazelly glens " of the 
Nith, with his pleasant outlook of woods and waters, 
for mean Dumfries, the Wee Vennel, the dirty and 
sordid streets and alleys? But necessity is a stern 



BONNIE JEAN. 145 

master; and Dante's exile and Tasso's prison teach 
us that, for poets, as for ordinary mortals, there is 
appointed a destiny that we all must learn to dree. 

Whatever storms came here the skies were often 
fair, and such starry influences rose over him as had 
only blessed his boyhood. For is it not true that 
love in its first blush kindles a new youth-tide? Here 
his first winter of married life "glided happily" 
away, while ' ' golden days of the heart and the 
fancy often shone, when the father rejoiced in the 
crown of the poet." Down by yonder riverside 
Jeans aw him, bewitched, inspired, — stalking past her 
with shining visionary eyes, gesticulating with his 
arms, and rabbling off verses, — his brain hot with 
the throes of Tarn O'Shanter! 

" Kings may be blest, but he was glorious, 
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious !" 

Out in yonder stack-yard, prone on the ground, did 
not his wife find him in a realm of rapture, his eyes 
fixed upon the kindling star of dawn then shinning 
with lessening ray? Could she know that then was 
born in his soul a lyric cry to which the heart of 
every after age should tremble, to the end of time? 
Here, to this new shrine of song, came many a 
visitor — now and then one not altogether mean or 
obscure, — among them "the fat and festive Grose," 
who let fall his 

11 Fouth o' all uick-nackets, 
Rusty aim caps aud jinglin' jackets," 

to hear from the poet's own lips " of the wonderful 
jump of Cutty Sark and the magnificent terrors of 
Tarn." 

It is a curiously entertaining glimpse we get of 
Burns and his wife, as entertainers, while yet they 



146 BONNIE JEAN. 

lived in the Ellisland cottage, through the eyes of 
the English writer, Samuel Egerton Bridges. 
Drawn by the fame of the new bard, and by admira- 
tion for his genius, he came seeking an interview ; but, 
fearing that Burns might be in a mood unfavorable 
to a gracious reception, proceeded cautiously, and 
reconnoitred the neighborhood: 

"About a mile from his residence, on a bench 
under a tree, I passed a figure which, from the en- 
graved portraits of him, I did not doubt was the 
poet, but I did not venture to address him. On ar- 
riving at his cottage, Mrs. Burns opened the door; 
she was the plain sort of humble woman she had 
been described. She ushered me into a neat apart- 
ment, and said that she would send for Burns, who 
had gone for a walk. In about half an hour he 
came, and my conjecture proved right; he was the 
person I had seen on the bench by the roadside. At 
first I was not entirely pleased with his countenance, 
I thought it had a sort of capricious jealousy, as if 
he was half inclined to treat me as an intruder. I 
resolved to bear it, and try if I could humor him. 
I, let him choose his turn of conversation, but said 
a word about the friend whose letter I had brought 
to him. It was now about four in the afternoon of 
an autumn day. While we were talking, Mrs. Burns, 
as if accustomed to entertain visitors in this way, 
brought in a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and set the 
table. I accepted this hospitality. I could not help 
observing the curious glance with which he watched 
me at the entrance of this sequel of homely enter- 
tainment. He was satisfied; he filled our glasses, 
" Here's a health to auld Caledonia!" The fire 
sparkled in his eye, and mine sympathetically met 
his. He shook my hands and we were friends at 
once. Then he drank, 'Erin forever!' and the tear 



BONNIE JEAN. 147 

of delight burst from his eye. The fountain of his 
mind and of his heart opened at once, and flowed 
with abundant force almost till midnight. He had 
an amazing acuteness of intellect as well as glow of 
sentiment. * * * I never conversed 

with a man who appeared to be more warmly im- 
pressed with the beauties of nature, and visions of 
female beauty and tenderness seemed to transport 
him. He did not merely appear to be a poet at cas- 
ual intervals, but at every moment a poetical enthus- 
iasm seemed to beat in his veins, and he lived all 
his days the inward if not the outward life of a poet. 
I thought I perceived in Burns' cheek the symptoms 
of an energy which had been pushed too far, and he 
had this feeling himself. Every now and then he 
spoke of the grave so soon to close over him. His 
dark eye had at first a character of sternness, but as 
he became warm, though this did not entirely melt 
away, it was mingled with changes of extreme 
softness." 

Praise to Jean, also, — as steadfast in courage and 
gentleness and duteous affection, as her husband was 
in intellect and genius. We have little heart to fol- 
low her to Dumfries, the scene of her deepest 
sorrows and of her heaviest cares. She disappears 
within the walls of home, and we get few glimpses 
of her; but we cannot doubt that hers were ever-in- 
creasing privations and anxieties. Her husband is 
oftener and longer from home, more exposed to peril 
and mischance, more reckless and abandoned, at the 
last, and more in questionable company. Yes, she 
bears her part, though we see little of her ; still she 
keeps " her fireside clime" by dint of as brave a 
heart as then beat in the breast of a woman, and 
made an asylum for her wayward Robin, when stung 
with the whips and arrows " of outrageous fortune." 



148 BONNIE JEAN. 

He is still before us, — a figure, now noble, now 
pathetic, but always appealing, commanding, our 
sympathies. We see him riding, with Mr. Syme, 
over Galway moors in the rain, drenched and chill 
without, but his bosom in a "bleeze" with the 
martial fires of Caledonia, and the splendid concep- 
tion of " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." We see 
him as he lifts his glass to toast the nobler name 
than that of Pitt, — a spirited act that brought him 
under the eye and hand of official jealousy. We see 
him sheering away from the gala-day crowd who 
dared to scorn him on the streets of Dumfries, — cut 
to the heart that once was so light, but has been so 
broken. We see him at the well of Brow, on the 
Sol way shore, — the signet of death already on his 
brow. We see him sitting at the table of Mrs. Craig, 
widow of the minister of Ruthwell, and the setting 
sun shines full upon his face. His words, accom- 
panied with a smile of the sweetest benignity, spoken 
to the daughter of his hostess, when, observant, she 
stepped to drop the curtain, — are among the saddest, 
the most pathetic, he ever uttered: "Thank you, 
my dear, for your kind attention : but oh ! let him shine : 
he will not shine long for me." In all these scenes, 
and in many others, we see him moving, and his 
acts, like his words, are given to fame; but Jean, 
who loved him, as they can who love with prayers 
and deeds, is seen of few, and seen not at all heroic- 
ally, except in that light wherein He sees who sees 
truly the heroes and martyrs of the fireside, — many 
of whose names are soon forgotten on the earth, 
though they are written in Heaven. 

She was a true wife ; she could more than forgive. 
To her, after her husband had gone, his memory 
was radiant, and the very color of his faults faded 
away. The largeness of her heart had something of 



BONNIE JEAN. 149 

divineness in it; and it was no small tribute to her 
erring lover when she could say of him, years after 
his death, while conversing with the Ettrick Shep- 
herd: " He never said a misbehadden word to me a' 
the days o' his life." Then, I will venture to say, 
were he here to declare himself, he could utter as 
much of her. Mild of speech, gentle of heart, pru- 
dent and discreet, she could soothe and charm his 
perturbed spirit, and settle his cares to rest. Was 
any other woman he ever loved and sung so fitted to 
him? Highland Mary might beckon him from 
Heaven, but Jean Armour steadied his sometime 
faltering step upon the earth. 

She survived him till the lichens had time to grow 
upon his gravestone ; till his dust had been exhumed 
and grandly ensepulchred again. She lived to a 
serene and beautiful age; she saw the star of his 
fame ascended high, and knew him, by universal 
rumor, one of the greatest poets of all time. She 
lived, honored, respected, beloved, and dwelt among 
her children and her children's children. In her 
widowhood she abode, and held the name and mem- 
ory of her consort sacred, nor ever pined for another 
manly arm to lean upon. Before Hew Ainslie left 
Scotland for America, he called upon her; — and, 
while he opens the door, we get a peep at her in her 
closing years : 

"It was," as Thomas Latto relates, "in a some- 
what pensive mood that he sought and entered Mrs. 
Burns' humble cottage, where she lived in compara- 
tive comfort and unquestioned respectability, sup- 
ported to a great extent by the bounty of Lord Pan- 
mure; who, though he refused to contribute more 
than a paltry pittance for the maintenance of his son 
and heir, the Hon. Fox Maule, was pleased to in- 
dulge one of his crotchets by donating ^"ioo per 



i 5 o BONNIE JEAN. 

annum to Robert Burns' struggling - , half-destitute 
widow. She was overrun with visitors, but the 
stranger introducing himself, she received him in 
her kindly motherly way. His manner was very 
winning when not oppressed by a sense of conde- 
cending patronage, and of that Jean had none. They 
got unco pack an' thick thegither in less time than it 
takes to tell it, and of course the dead poet formed 
the staple of ' the twa-handed crack.' She commun- 
icated to him a good deal that has now passed from 
a usually retentive memory. ' Fowr oors ' was just 
approaching, and the venerable dame proceeding to 
' mask ' her tea, courteously invited him to remain 
and share the refreshing cup. They talked of relic 
hunters, and she professed herself utterly aweary of 
them and their pertinacity. She spoke almost 
cheerily of the ' roup ' of their furniture after the 
great man's death, and of the ' awful ' prices realized 
by eight-day clock, dilapidated ' chairs, pans, grid- 
dles, etc' 'But oh!' she said jokingly, 'if they 
were to be sell't noo they wad bring twenty times 
mair. ' Hew wanted to take a short walk in some 
of the bard's haunts, and she immediately looked for 
a shawl to accompany him. ' I'm thinkin,' remarked 
our young man, ' that can hardly be the shawl ye 
got frae George Thomson.' * No quite,' was her 
simple reply, ' that wad need to hae been well hained 
to last so long. It's sax an' thretty years sin' he 
made me that present.' They walked together to 
Lincluden Abbey, I think — at any rate to a ruin — 
and she stood for a moment on a certain sheltered 
and lovely spot. 'It was just here,' she observed, 
' that my man af ten paused, and I believe made up 
mony a poem an' sang ere he cam' in to write it 
doun. He was never fractious — aye gude natured 
and kind baith to the bairns and to me. ' Hew felt 



BONNIE JEAN. 151 

then, as he did long afterwards, that Jean, of all the 
women in the world, was the one specially fitted to 
be the poet's life-long companion. Clarinda had a 
dangerous ' spunk ' about her, and would have stood 
no nonsense nor tolerated his admitted aberrations. 
Mary Campbell, though gentle and amiable, had yet 
Highland blood in her veins, and the ire of the scions 
of Macallum is sometimes easily roused and not so 
easily laid. But Jean was indulgent, patient, affec- 
tionate, gentle, good, and above all, forgiving. She 
was by no means the untidy woman she has been 
represented. Her skin and complexion, even in ad- 
vanced age, were fine, and she might be considered 
a comely, as she was unquestionably a pleasant, 
woman. When they returned from the trip, Ainslie 
proposed taking his immediate departure, but before 
leaving, grasping her hand, he said : ' I wad like weel 
ere I gae, if ye wad permit me to kiss the cheek o' 
Burns' faithfu' Jean, to be a reminder to me o' this 
meetin' when I'm far awa. ' She laughed, held up 
her face to him and said: 'Aye, lad, an' welcome.' 
So he printed a kiss on her still unwitnered lips, and 
that was the last he saw of Jeanie Armour." 

Her memory is Still fragrant, and, with that of 
her husband, — whom she survived for a term of 
years equal to the whole duration of his earthly life, 
— forms a part of that haunted landscape. She is 
held dear, for his sake and for her own. Just now 
beneath our eyes lies a rude engraving of Bonnie 
Jean, and of her little granddaughter, — a slip of a 
girl, who stands beside the seated matron, enfolding 
her neck with a slender arm. A white frilled head- 
dress gives an appearance of unusual fullness, al- 
most of pufrmess, to the face, — a face that is still 
fair, if not beautiful. These are the same winning 
eyes that captivated Burns, the same motherly linea- 



152 BONNIE JEAN. 

ments that Ainslie looked upon and that Latto de- 
scribed. Dark curling locks partially escape from 
her cap's border, and the lips and nose suggest none 
of .the shrinking or pinching that comes with age. 
It is an engaging and lovable face, with the bright- 
ness and freshness that belong to flowers and run- 
ning water, — so that I marvel not her poet sang of 
her: 

" I see her in the dewy flowers, 

I see her sweet and fair ; 
I hear her in the tunfu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air : 
There's not a bonnie flower that springs 

By fountain, shaw, or green ; 
There's not a bonnie bird that sings 

But minds me o' my Jean." 



BONNIE JEAN. 153 

THE BEST WIFE FOR BURNS. 



By George Gebbie. 



Jean Armour was the best wife Burns could have 
married, when we consider his education and early 
associations, and all the circumstances surrounding 
him. She was good-looking, healthy, industrious, 
thrifty. She was, moreover, what Burns wanted 
most in a wife, forgiving, and he must have a strange 
mind who says that she didn't love him with a de- 
votion undivided and unwavering. Had Burns been 
born, reared and educated otherwise than he was, it 
might have been, allowable to suppose that a better 
wife than Jean Armour could have been selected for 
him; but as circumstances found him, we say, she 
was the best wife for him. Had he married " Clar- 
inda " or Margaret Chalmers, both of whom could 
have appreciated him as a poet, there would have 
been some congenial days and weeks, perhaps, but 
in the long run we do not believe that they could 
have controlled the wayward "Son of Song" any 
more than Jean did, especially when we remember 
the Scotland of the days of Burns. True, a woman 
of strong character would have tried to correct him 
and keep him straight, and there is just where the 
trouble would have come in. Burns would have 
kicked over the traces, the harness would have been 
broken, and mending it would only have more 
rapidly hastened the catastrophe which was fated to 
occur. Jean had advantages of position which 
Burns had not, — the association of local acquaintance 
between herself and her husband, and all the glamour 



i 5 4 BONNIE JEAN. 

of an early and fervent love between the two. 
Then, their children existed, and her appreciation of 
him (we have his own statement for it) was un- 
bounded; and we also know from his own letters 
that in music, she was a kindred spirit, as his fre- 
quent references to her " Woodnotes wild," bear 
ample witness. 




BONNIE JEAN. 155 

BURNS'S BONNIE JEAN. 



By Angus Ross, Glasgow, 
Author of "Home and other Poems. 



Great Dukes and Earls may find a place, 

On History's hoary page; 
And ladies fair of stately grace, 

May poet's pen engage, 
Be mine to sing the praises due 

To Burns's Bonnie Jean. 

By fate's decree of lowly birth, 

And in a cottage bred ; 
Yet was her heart of truest worth, 

Her soul with truth inlaid, 
And fair like gowan on the green 

Was Burns's Bonnie Jean. 

Tho' oft the bard in lofty strains 

Did of his country sing; 
Of Bruce and Wallace and their trains 

He made the echoes ring; 
But aye he poured his sweetest strains 

In praise of Bonnie Jean. 

While Bonnie Doon flows to the sea, 
And flowers spring to be pressed, 

While little birds sing merrily, 
And love stirs human breast, 

Of noble women she'll be queen, 
This Burns's Bonnie Jean. 



156 BONNIE JEAN. 

THE HOME LIFE OF BURNS AND 
JEAN ARMOUR. 



Dumfries Letter to the London Times, Dec. 7, 1887. 



The south-western region of Scotland — Dumfries 
and Galloway — lying toward the sun on the northern 
shore of the Solway, is not much sought after by 
lovers of picturesque scenery. It lies out of the 
beaten track of tourists and wonder hunters. In 
comparison with the solemn grandeur of the High- 
land mountains and glens and the stern ruggedness 
of the west coast, it is nowhere. Rich beauty 
rather than sterile sublimity is its most prominent 
characteristic history, antiquity and modern litera- 
ture add the charms of association to the scenery in 
a way that is quite unique. The ruins of Caerlave- 
rock and Lochmaben and Thrieve Castles remind us 
of feudal times. The ruins of Dundrennan, Sweet- 
heart, and Lincluden Abbeys carry us back to the 
monastic age. Carsluith and Ravenshall tell us that 
we are in the land of Scott — of Guy Mannering and 
Redgauntlet. Ellisland and Dumfries conjure us 
into the land of Burns, associated as they are with 
the scenes of "Scots wha hae " and " Auld Lang 
Syne," and "Duncan Gray," and many other of the 
choicest lyrics of the ploughman bard. Unquestion- 
ably it is their later literary associations that consti- 
tute the potent spell that attracts wanderers, enthus- 
iastic, though comparatively few, to this region of 
Scotland. If any proof of this were required, it 
would be found in the fact that the great majority 
of the pilgrims whose curiosity leads them into the 
district are neither Englishmen nor Scotsmen, but 



BONNIE JEAN. 157 

are Americans. Americans care very little for feudal 
times — for Maxwel's or Johnstons, or Kirkpatricks, 
for monks or for nuns — but they care a great deal 
for Meg Merrilles and Bertram of Ellangowan, for 
Robert Burns and Bonnie Jean, for Highland Mary 
and Tarn o'Shanter. And here Burns rather than 
Scott, is the potent attraction. All Scotland is the 
land of Scott — from Sumburg Head to Kirkmaiden ; 
but there are, as every one knows, two Lands of 
Burns. There is the Ayrshire land, in which the 
poet spent his youth and his early manhood; and 
there is the Dumfriesshire land, in which he spent 
the last eight years of his life, which proved at once 
his saddest and his most brilliant as well as his most 
prolific days. It is of Dumfriesshire as the scene of 
the greatest trials and the greatest triumphs of the 
life of Burns, as his last home on earth and the 
cherished resting-place of his ashes, that I wish to 
speak in this letter. 

Burns was in his thirtieth year when he made a 
fresh start in life as tenant of the farm of Ellisland, 
about five miles north of the town of Dumfries. 
He was newly married to Jean Armour; he had 
visited Edinburgh, and his reputation as a poet was 
fairly established. He - was full of the energy of 
early manhood, and fortune seemed to be smiling on 
his efforts to establish for himself a permanent 
home. The present farm-house of Ellisland, on the 
right bank of the gently flowing Nith, was built for 
Burns after he entered on the tenancy of the farm. 
It is a long, low, not uncomfortable one-story house 
of four rooms, and it is now in much the same state 
in which it was then, excepting that the room which 
Burns used as a kitchen is now a bedroom. Burns's 
parlor is still the parlor of the house. Lines 
scratched with a diamond on the windows of this and 



i 5 8 BONNIE JEAN. 

another room profess to be from the poet's hand, as 
he had a well-known fondness for making his mark 
in that way; but these Ellisland lines are of more 
than donbtful authenticity. It is interesting to think 
that these rooms constituted the home of Burns dur- 
ing the happiest, or at least the most hopeful days of 
his life. It is more interesting perhaps to go outside 
and to feel that these are the very woods and fields 
and river on which the poet's eye rested, and whence 
he drew some of his natural inspiration. Across the 
Nitli are the woods of Dalswinton, and what was 
then the residence of Burns's ingenious and sympa- 
thetic landlord, Miller, the inventor of the steam- 
boat. About a mile higher up the Nith on his own 
side are the pleasant bowers of Friar's Carse, where 
lived his good friend Capt. Riddel of Glenriddel; 
and between them was the Hermitage, then a charm- 
ing rustic retreat, to which Riddel gave the poet a 
private key. Close at hand is the Nith itself, which 
was to Burns a perpetual joy — " Winding Nith," 
"Wandering Nith," "Sweet Nith" — sharer of his 
secrets and sole witness of many of his poetical 
paroxysms. Many were the pleasant walks he had 
by the green bank of the river between Ellisland 
and Friar's Carse, but to him doubtless the path was 
also strewn with sad and serious memories, such as 
those which led him on one occasion to pause at the 
Hermitage and moralize in the character of "The 
Beadsman of Nith-side. " It would be interesting to 
have some record of his thoughts as he traversed 
this path to and from the famous drinking tourna- 
ment at Friar's Carse, which he attended as umpire 
and chronicler, and which he immortalized in the 
poem beginning: 

11 1 sing of a whistle, a whistle of worth." 



BONNIE JEAN. 159 

A few nights later, in the barnyard at Ellisland, a 
fit of deepest melancholy gave place to a divine 
ecstacy, out of which came the sublime verses, " To 
Mary in Heaven." Burns made and sometimes 
wrote his finest poems in the open air. There is a 
haugh b} 7 the river below Ellisland which was the 
scene of some of his grandest " poetic pains." Once 
he agonized there for a whole day, pacing the green- 
sward from end to end, now muttering or crooning 
to himself, now pausing by the dike-side to put down 
a thought or a verse, and before the sun had set he 
had completed "Tarn o'Shanter" — "since Bruce 
fought Bannockburn, " says Alexander Smith, "the 
best single day's work done in Scotland." Here, 
also, before his wife had joined him, he had given 
voice to his lonely yearnings in that tenderest of low 
lyrics, "Of a' the airts the wind can blaw. " At 
Ellisland, too, Burns wrote his incomparable fare- 
well to " Clarinda " 

" Ae fond kiss and then we sever." 

of one stanza which — the fourth — Scott said that it 
contained "the essence of a thousand love tales." 
These are the now famous lines : 

" Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Never met or never parted — 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 

But at Ellisland the poet's muse was much more 
prolific than his farm. Though for a year he had 
conjoined with his farm the post of gauger or excise 
officer, with a salary of ^50 a year, he found him- 
self, at the end of 1791 in such straitened circum- 
stances that he was forced to throw up his lease and 
to remove to the town of Dumfries, trusting to his 



160 BONNIE JEAN. 

office in the excise for his only means of livelihood. 
In Dumfries, Burns, with his wife and three sons, 
took up his abode in a house of three rooms on the 
second floor of a tenement in the "Wee Vennel," 
now Bank street. About two years afterward he re- 
moved to a better house, self-contained, in Mill 
street, or the Mill-hole Brae, but now called Burns 
street, and there he spent the remainder of his days. 
Both of these houses are now objects of interest to 
pilgrims to the poet's shrine, especially the latter, in 
which one sees the little parlor in which Burns en- 
joyed the sweets of home life, and the bedroom in 
which he died. It is satisfactory to know that the 
house in Burns street, which Mrs. Burns (Jean 
Armour) occupied till her death, in 1834, was pur- 
chased by the poet's family and committed to the 
custody of Public Trustees, who are bound to uphold 
it forever. It is occupied by the master of the in- 
dustrial school built on the adjoining- land, which 
bears on its front a tablet recording the fact of 
Burns residence there, and surmounted by a bust of 
the poet. Dumfries was then, as it is still, one of 
the handsomest of the provincial capitals of Scotland. 
"Queen of the South" it proudly calls itself, and 
there is not a little of regal splendor in its spires and 
towers, and in its commanding site on the banks of 
the Nith. There are points in the town from which 
magnificent views are obtained of Nithsdale, with 
Lincluden Abbey in the middle distance, and Queens- 
berry Hill crowning the surrounding heights. Then, 
even more than now, Dumfries was a noted fashion- 
able resort, in which Edinburgh being too far dis- 
tant and London being out of the question, the local 
nobility and gentry had their town residences. By 
the intellectual society Burns was well received, at 
least until his political opinions, still more than his 



BONNIE JEAN. 161 

social eccentricities — for the latter were those of the 
time and ought to have gained him sympathy rather 
than aversion — brought him into collision with the 
apostles of good society. Though the persecutors 
of Burns have gone to their own place, Dumfries 
still rings with the name of Burns from end to end. 
A marble statue of Burns, recently erected, fills the 
place of honor in the streets of the town. The 
Mausoleum of Burns, in St. Michael's Churchyard, is 
the entire attraction to all from far or near who visit 
the place. The site of his pew in St. Michael's 
Church — for the pew itself was long ago purchased 
and carried off by a devoted admirer — is regarded 
with subdued reverence. The parlor in the Globe 
Tavern — " Burns's Howfl" — in which he spent many 
a merry evening, and in which his favorite chair, 
occupying the Poet's Corner, is still sacredly pre- 
served, is a point of interest which no pilgrim would 
dream of omitting. 

Unhappily, the same Globe Tavern has been the 
cause of endless misconceptions of the poet's good 
name. It has been assumed that, because he was a 
frequenter of taverns, he was therefore a hopelessly 
abandoned character and an unmitigated sot. Those 
who leap to this conclusion are forgetful of the 
times and of the custom of the times in which Burns 
lived. They forget that the tavern was in those 
days what the daily newspaper is in these — the only 
available means of acquiring and of discussing the 
news of the day. That Burns, in his pursuit of 
social intercourse, sometimes drank to excess cannot 
be denied; but that he was a habitual drunkard is 
the reverse of the truth. The best proof of this is 
found in the fact, which is on record on the testimony 
of his wife, and of those who knew him best, that 
Burns was never known to drink to excess in his own 



j62 BONNIE JEAN. 

house. His faults, grave as they were, were those 
of his time, and not of the man. No one, therefore, 
who goes to Dumfries and who drinks to the im- 
mortal memory of the bard in the Globe Tavern 
need be troubled with " compunctious visitings " on 
the ground that he is commemorating the fatal orgies 
of a confirmed bacchanalian. Burns was nothing of 
that kind. He had his weaknesses and his faults, 
like other men — more than other men, because of 
his tenderly strung and super-sensitive nature, of a 
pulse that "ran like a ratton " — and mightily he 
suffered for them. But the sentimental prudery of 
the present day that affects abhorrence of the name 
of Burns because certain lordlings gave him a cold 
shoulder in the streets of Dumfries ought to be re- 
minded that it was for his political far more than for 
his social excesses that he was made a martyr in his 
later days. 

Infinitely more pleasant, however, than the mem- 
ory of Burns as a frequenter of the Globe Tavern is 
it to think of him as pacing, evening after evening in 
Summer time, the Dock Meadow, or the banks of 
"winding Nith," opposite Lincluden, and excogitat- 
ing the century of immortal lyrics which have en- 
deared his name to his countrymen. Next to the 
Ellisland period the Dumfries period was the richest 
and most prolific in the history of his teeming fancy. 
" Duncan Gray," " Last May a braw wooer," " My 
heart is sair, " " Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon," 
"Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast," "Scots wha 
hae,' and the immortal " Auld Lang Syne," are 
among the productions of the poet's muse in the 
Dumfries period. The enumeration does not suggest 
either mental decadence or moral deterioration. 
The real sadness lies in the reflection that the maker 
of these masterpieces of our literature, and of all 



BONNIE JEAN. 163 

literature, was at the time of their production a 
supervisor of excise with a salary of ^70 a year, 
living in a house in Dumfries for which he paid no 
more than £& a year rent. It is pleasant, at the 
same time to know that Burns has still representatives 
in the flesh who cherish his memory. His third son, 
Lieut. Col. James Glencairn Burns, left a daughter 
by his first marriage named Sarah, who married Dr. 
Berkeley Hutchison, of Cheltenham, and who has a 
son and three daughters. These are the great- 
grandchildren of the poet, and are his only direct 
and lawful descendants. James Burns was twice 
married, and by his second marriage he also left a 
daughter, who is still Miss Burns, and who resides at 
Cheltenham with her half-sister. 



164 BONNIE JEAN. 



THE POET'S IMMORTAL WREATH 
FOR BONNIE JEAN. 



A MAUCHLINE LADY. 

When first I came to Stewart Kyle, 

My mind it was na steady, 
Where'er I gaed, where'er I rade, 

A mistress still I had aye : 
But when I came roun' by Mauchline town, 

Not dreadin' onie body, 
My heart was caught before I thought, 

And by a Mauchline lady. 



THE BELLES OF MAUCHLINE. 

In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, 
The pride of the place and its neighborhood a', 

Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess, 
In London or Paris they'd gotten it a' : 

Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland's divine, 

Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw: 

There's beauty and fortune to get wi' Miss Morton, 
But Armour's the jewel for me o' them a'. 



BONNIE JEAN. 165 



OH! WERE I ON PARNASSUS' HILL. 

Oh, were I on Parnassus' hill ! 
Or 'had of Helicon my fill; 
That I might catch poetic skill, 

To sing how dear I love thee. 
But Nith maun be my muse's well, 
My muse maun be thy bonnie sel' ; 
On Corsincon I'll glow'r an' spell, 

An' write how dear I love thee. 

Then come, sweet muse, inspire my lay! 
For a' the lee-lang simmer's day 
I couldna sing, I couldna say, 

How much, how dear I love thee. 
I see thee dancing o'er the green, 
Thy waist sae jimp, thy limbs sae clean, 
Thy tempting lips, thy roguish een— 

By heaven an' earth I love thee. 

By night, by day, a-field, at hame, 

The thoughts o' thee my breast inflame ; 

An' aye I muse an" sing thy name— 

I only live to love thee. 
Tho' I were doom'd to wander on, 
Beyond the sea, beyond the sun, 
Till my last weary sand was run ; 

Till then— and then I love thee. 



66 BONNIE JEAN. 



MY JEAN. 

Tho' cruel fate should bid us part, 

As far's the pole and line ; 
Her dear idea round my heart 

Should tenderly entwine. 

Tho' mountains frown and deserts howl, 

And oceans roar between ; 
Yet, dearer than my deathless soul, 

I still would love my Jean. 



OF A' THE AIRTS THE WIND CAN BLAW. 

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 

I dearly like the west, 
For there the bonnie lassie lives, 

The lassie I lo'e best : 
There wild woods grow, and rivers row, 

And mony a hill between ; 
But day and night my fancy's flight 

Is ever wi' my Jean. 

I see her in the dewy flowers, 

I see her sweet and fair: 
I hear her in the tunefu' birds, 

I hear her charm the air : 
There's not a bonnie flower that springs 

By fountain, shaw, or green, 
There's not a bonnie bird that sings, 

But minds me o' my Jean. 



BONNIE JEAN. 167 



IT IS NA, JEAN, THY BONNIE FACE. 

It is na, Jean, thy bonnie face, 

Nor shape that I admire, 
Although thy beauty and thy grace 

Might weel awake desire. 
Something in ilka part o' thee, 

To praise, to love, I find : 
But dear as is thy form to me, 

Still dearer is thy mind. 

Nae mair ungen'rous wish I hae, 

Nor stronger in my breast, 
Than if I canna mak thee sae, 

At least to see thee blest. 
Content am I, if Heaven shall give 

But happiness to thee : 
And as wi' thee I'd wish to live, 

For thee I'd bear to die. 



1 68 



BONNIE JEAN. 



I HA'E A WIFE O* MY AIN. 

I ha'e a wife o' my ain — 

I'll partake wi' naebody; 
I'll tak' cuckold frae nane, 

I'll gi'e cuckold to naebody. 
I ha'e a penny to spend, 

There — thanks to naebody ; 
I ha'e naething to lend, 

I'll borrow frae naebody. 



I am naebody's lord — 

I'll be slave to naebody; 
I ha'e a gude braid sword, 

I'll tak' dunts frae naebody. 
I'll be merry an' free, 

I'll be sad for naebody; 
If naebody care for me, 

I'll care for naebody. 



BONNIE JEAN. 169 



THE WINSOME WEE THING. 

She is a winsome wee thing, 
She is a handsome wee thing, 
She is a bonnie wee thing, 
This sweet wee wife o' mine. 

I never saw a fairer, 

I never lo'ed a dearer ; 

And neist my heart I'll wear her, 

For fear my jewel tine. 

Oh leeze me on my wee thing ; 
My bonnie, blythesome wee thing ; 
Sae lang's I hae my wee thing, 
I'll think my lot divine. 

Tho' warld's care we share o't, 
And may see meikle mair o't ; 
Wi' her I'll blythely bear it, 
And ne'er a word repine. 



i7o BONNIE JEAN. 



THIS IS NO MY AIN LASSIE. 

CHORUS. 

Oh this is no my ain lassie, 

Fair tho' the lassie be; 
Oh weel ken I my ain lassie, 

Kind love is in her e'e. 

I see a form, I see a face 
Ye weel may wi' the fairest place ; 
It wants to me the witching grace, 
The kind love that's in her e'e. 

She's bonnie, blooming, straight, and tall, 
And lang has had my heart in thrall ; 
And aye it charms my very saul, 
The kind love that's in her e'e. 

A thief sae paukie is my Jean, 
To steal a blink, by a' unseen ; 
But gleg as light are lovers' een, 
When kind love is in her e'e. 

It may escape the courtly sparks, 
It may escape the learned clerks ; 
But weel the watching lover marks 
The kind love that's in her e'e. 



BONNIE JEAN. 171 



THEIR GROVES OF vSWEET MYRTLE. 

Their groves o' sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, 
Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume ; 

Far dearer to me yon lone glen o' green breckan, 
Wi' the burn stealing under the long yellow broom. 

Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowers, 
Where the blue-bell an' gowan lurk lowly unseen; 

For there, lightly tripping amang the wild flowers, 
A-listening the linnet aft wanders my Jean. 

Tho' rich is the breeze in their gay sunny valleys, 

An' cauld Caledonia's blast on the wave ; 
Their sweet sented woodlands that skirt the proud 
palace, 
What are they? — the haunt of the tyrant and 
slave ! 

The slave's spicy forests, and gold bubbling fountains, 
The brave Caledonian views wi' disdain ; 

He wanders as free as the winds of his mountains, 
Save loves willing fetters — the chains o' his Jean ! 



172 BONNIE JEAN. 



I'LL AYE CA' IN BY YON TOWN. 

I'll aye ca' in by yon town, 

And by yon garden green, again ; 
I'll aye ca' in by yon town, 

And see my bonnie Jean, again. 
There's nane sail ken, there's nane sail guess, 

What brings me back the gate again, 
But she, my fairest, faithfu' lass, 

And stowlins we sail meet again. 

She'll wander by the aiken tree, 

When trystin-time draws near again ; 
And when her lovely form I see, 

Oh, haith, she's doubly dear again ! 
I'll aye ca' in by yon town, 

And by yon garden green again ; 
I'll aye ca' in by yon town, 

And see my bonnie Jean, again. 






BONNIE JEAN. 173 

BY WAY OF EPILOGUE. 



By Hon. Charles H. Collins. 



There are so many women connected with Burns 
that for many years the one who above all others 
was the source of his greatest inspiration was not at 
once recognized. This is the woman to whom 
Burns on his death bed in 1796, amid the horrors of 
poverty and distress made the memorable declaration 
"They will ken me better, Jean, a hundred years 
hence." 

He saw then dimly as in a vision, his future fame 
and that his devoted wife "Bonnie Jean" would 
arise in glory by his side forever linked with him. 
Jean knew the real Burns — not the artificial. She 
knew that she was his fate — that she was for him, 
and better for him than any of those who simply 
represented episodes in his fitful career. Of Jean 
Armour none can speak but in praise. Her place is 
fixed in the good opinion of generations gone before 
and of those yet to come. 

The wisest and most discriminating of Scottish 
writers have written of her in characters of purest 
ray serene and posterity has enthroned her memory 
as the loving, faithful, true and much enduring wife 
of an erratic and hard-to-manage man, who 'mid all 
his wanderings paid to her the truest homage of a 
love boundless as it was sincere. Ellison Begbie, 
Burns thought (at one time) would have made him 
happy. She did not think so, and "the Lass of 
Cessnock Banks" judged wisely. "My Handsome 
Nell " was a delightful memory, but this sweet inno- 
cent being would have made a poor life partner for 



174 BONNIE JEAN. 

the matured Burns. It required the strong will, the 
perfect womanhood of Jean Armour to control that 
proud and passion ladened soul. She tamed his re- 
morseful notes — quelled the haunting spirits which 
like the Furies pursued this Modern Orestes of Scot- 
tish song judging by many of his lyrics. 

To Jean the real Burns always appeared, not the 
fever heated brain driven by consuming flame on- 
ward to an uncertain fate. Without her his fame 
would have been as fitful as the luring glare of the 
"Will o' the wisp" over the Scottish fens. The 
ghouls who have ransacked every detail of the Poet's 
life stand silenced and abashed now at the end of the 
hundred years before the character of Jean who 
knew him better than all the world beside and for- 
gave him all out of her great love and great true 
heart. The world at the end of the hundred years 
has without hesitation, guided by the instinct of 
justice, set aside even Highland Mary the immortal- 
ized deity of song and placed far above her " Bonnie 
Jean." 

There is a little song of Burns's entitled "The 
Mauchline Lady " which I have always thought gave 
an unconscious glimpse of his own unsteadiness and 
of the power of Jean Armour over him from the 
beginning — 

" When first I came to Stewart Kyle 

My mind it was na' steady, 
Where'er I gaed, where'er I rade, 

A mistress still I had aye ; 
But when I cam' roun' by Mauchline town, 

Not dreadin' ony body, 
My heart was caught before I thought 

And by a Mauchline lady." 

Again in his description of the Belles of Mauchline, 
"Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland's divine, Miss 



BONNIE JEAN. 175 

Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw ; There's 
beauty and fortune to get wi' Miss Morton. But 
Armour's the jewel for me o' them a'." 

Poor Burns, he could no more escape his destiny 
than the moth allured by the candle's flame, but in 
case of Burns it was a happy destiny and not a phan- 
tom alluring to death. 

If Providence (as many suppose) fixes our ends, 
then the creation of Jean Armour was a necessary 
solvent to make Burns life complete. When the 
Poet contemplated his West India trip and an 
eternal separation from his native land, his sweetest 
words were for " My Jean " and not for Highland 
Mary. Compare and see which is from the heart : 

" Though cruel fate should bid us part, 

Far as the pole and line, 
Her dear idea round my heart 

Should tenderly entwine. 

Though mountains rise, and deserts howl, 

And oceans roar between : 
Yet dearer than my deathless soul, 

I still would love my Jean." 

The tribute paid to Mrs. Burns in the song "Oh, 
were I on Parnassus Hill " speaks volumes. It was 
produced before she took up her residence at Ellis- 
land as his wife. He composed it one day while gaz- 
ing towards the hill of Corsincon at the head of 
Nithsdale and beyond which was the quiet vale 
where lived his " bonnie Jean." 

"Of a' the airts the wind can blaw'' Burns has 
told us he composed out of compliment to Mrs. 
Burns during their honeymoon. It is by many com- 
petent critics considered his best. Read that beauti- 
ful song and see the true Burns. Read it and see 
who was the real heroine and guiding star under 



176 BONNIE JEAN. 

whose serene rays the fame of Burns grew. As to 
how happy she made him, look at the sprightly 
lines "I hae a wife o' my ain," written shortly 
after the poet had welcomed home his wife to his 
new house at Ellisland — the first winter he spent in 
which he has described as the happiest of his life. 
Burns has himself in another lyric given us a char- 
acter of his wife which cannot be improved upon. 
Nothing can be added to it. 

" It is na, Jean, thy bonie face, 

Nor shape that I admire, 
Although thy beauty and thy grace 

Might weel awake desire. 
Something, in ilk a part of thee, 

To praise, to love, I rind ; 
But, dear as is thy form to me, 

Still dearer is thy mind. 

Nae mair ungenrous wish I hae, 

Nor stronger in my breast, 
Than if I canna mak' thee sae, 

At least to see thee blest. 
Content am I, if Heaven shall give, 

But happiness to thee ; 
And as wi thee I'd wish to live, 

For thee I'd bear to die." 

In chapter six of " All about Burns," a former com- 
plation of our present editor, I find an admirable de- 
lineation of "Bonnie Jean" by Dr. Peter Ross, admir- 
able for its fairness, its just and discriminating study 
of the questions involved and creditable to the 
author who places the devotion of this true woman, 
wife and mother far above all future criticisim. 

It is a tribute worthy of this noble woman and 
worthy of the author who has seen through all the 
glamour of the Mary, and Clarinda episodes and in- 
stalls Bonnie Jean forever as the mistress of the 
Poet's home — the true mistress of his heart. 



BONNIE JEAN. 177 

Dr. Ross says there was one difference which 
speaks volumes for Jean's supremacy in the Poet's 
heart. " While he sang for her, she was before him 
with all the faults frailties and short comings of 
humanity; all the tedium, as it has been called of 
ordinary daily life while Highland Mary had passed 
through the veil and so become idealized long before 
the "lingering star " aroused in him such a force of 
agonized thought, and in time impelled the world, as 
a result of his burning words to elevate the High- 
land lass into one of the heroines of poetry." Jean 
stood her ground, conquered even Highland Mary 
and around her Burns has woven a garment as en- 
during as his own fame. In Bonnie Jean the tragic 
element plays no part. Pathos there is; endurance 
of a hard lot — a brave struggle under adverse con- 
ditions ; in short, the annals of history show no truer 
woman, better wife or more affectionate mother 
than Jean Armour to whom Burns was indebted for 
the few happy hours he spent at home. Of all these 
things he is the witness. She purified him, she 
elevated him and guarded his fame with jealous care 
during the long years she survived him. May her 
name and memory be ever cherished by all true and 
faithful women who have walked up the flinty crags 
of time with bleeding hearts and who have stood 
firm to duty and untarnished by even a breath of 
scandal during all their days of wifehood until the 
end came. 

To be the wife of a genius such as Burns was to 
be endowed with qualities such as few possess. The 
fate of Byron, Durer, Milton and the long drawn 
catalogue of unhappy unions shows this. Jean 
Armour proved equal to the task. Jean Armour 
succeeded where others would have failed. She did 
not quarrel ; she did not upbraid ; she was blind to 



i 7 8 BONNIE JEAN. 

his follies. She was a woman of tact. She under- 
stood him thoroughly. She was his good genius. 

Did you ever compare the women of Shakespeare 
with those of Burns? 

In the long line of shadowy figures projected on 
the canvas of time by Shakespeare his women have 
always appealed to the artistic sense in all lands. 
Centuries have passed away, yet the endless com- 
mentaries do not cease. Every one who studies 
Shakespeare assumes he has found some new reason 
for the characters — some occult meaning not hereto- 
fore discovered. Shakespeare has furnished a battle 
ground for the critics and a cause for a war of words 
as to whether or not he himself was not a figure- 
head; only a mere name under which the wits and 
scholars of his age ventilated their political ideas. 
Leaving all these controversies to those who delight 
in such matters, no one can find elsewhere more per- 
fect types of womanhood than in Shakespeare. 
Imogen and Cordelia above all others are such 
pictures of rare beauty of soul that it were vain to 
try to imitate. The German mind would come 
nearer to such ideals, but no Englishman before or 
since has approached them, as indeed none of the 
women of contemporary dramatists had any simil- 
arity to those of Shakespeare. Trace the whole 
course of literature through the 16th, 17th and 18th 
centuries and until we reach Robert Burns all is 
barren of the beautiful images clothed in feminine 
forms which all men instinctively rise up and wor- 
ship. The emotions as abstract things are often 
traced. The women of Dryden, of Pope, even of 
Byron have a certain lack of reality. There is no 
heart in them. Gulnare, Medora, Haidee, Parasina, 
in fact all of Byron's figures are Byrons in disguise. 
A great poet, a great word painter yet withal a 



BONNIE JEAN. 179 

scorner of the humble every day love which to all 
mankind and in all ages has seemed to be the nearest 
to Heaven on earth. With the coming of Robert 
Burns in the latter part of the 18th century there 
again appeared the woman who immediately took 
rank with the high bred heroines of Shakespeare. 
They were humble Scotch lassies but glorified by the 
pen of inspired genius and brought home to the 
hearts of all. 

They are intensely human. Their forms, their 
winsome smiles glow with life on historic pages. 
Their beauty still beguiles the senses and Rosalind 
in the forest of Ardennes is not more charming than 
" The Lass of Ballochmyle, " or "Fairest Maid on 
Devon Banks." The women of Shakespeare are 
but shadows of long ago — beautiful visions truly, 
but their loves^ and sorrows like those of Hecuba 
seem but as phantoms of the night, while the lassies 
sung by Burns stand sculptured in the light of one 
hundred years as plainly as seen by him. This is 
not art but truth. The truth which portrays our own 
hearts — our own women, the women of all times and 
ages. We love Imogen the fair daughter of Cymbe- 
line ; Cordelia the loving, brave and true ; the golden 
haired Juliet so exquisitely wooed and won by fiery 
Romeo; Viola pure as the dews fresh fallen from 
heaven; trusting and much wronged Desdemona, 
yet these are not of our own time — not of our en- 
vironment. These lovely creations of the dramatist's 
brain, restless in their loves and with lives pierced 
by thorns mid the flowers, with all their pleasures 
mingled with pain are human indeed in their way, 
because Shakespeare had much of Burns in his 
makeup as Burns had much of Shakespeare. I mean 
by this that each had the faculty of knowing how to 
put things. Each was in touch with mankind. 



180 BONNIE JEAN. 

Every one sees something of himself, in Burns 
especially. Critical investigation has failed utterly 
to show why Shakespeare is so superior to all his 
contemporaries. Why he stands uniquely alone 
among all other writers of England, and unapproach- 
able. So cavil, investigation and the calcium light 
of merciless dissection has failed to fathom the 
genius of Burns. 

He is at the head and so easily that criticism 
stands rebuked. Little is known of Shakespeare. 
His personality is hidden in as much obscurity as 
that of Junius Burns is known through and 
through. He is part of all his creations and his 
heroines and himself go down the corridors of time 
to immortality hand in hand, the central figure being 
" Bonnie Jean," the queen by divine right and 
crowned by posterity with the wreath of Amarinthine 
unfading renown due to her above all others. If in 
song or story there is one fit to stand by her under 
similiar environments the pages at my command 
have not disclosed her. She at least seems to have 
had in good measure the qualities ascribed by Words- 
worth. "The reason firm, the temperate will, en- 
durance, foresight, strength and skill. A perfect 
woman nobly planned, to warn, to comfort and 
command." 



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THE SCOT IN AMERICA. 

BY PETER ROSS, LL. D., 

AUTHOR OF 

" Scotland and the Scots;" "Life of Saint Andrew /" " The 

Book of Scotia Lodge;" "Life and Works of Sir 

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Ln one volume, Crown 8vo. 460 pages, neatly bound in 
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THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. 

After reading "The Scot in America," the Right Hon. 
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"The power which Scotland has exhibited beyond her own 
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" PROGRESS," vST. JOHN, N. B. 

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THE POEMS OF GEORGE WILLIAMSON, 

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SCOTTISH POETS IN AMERICA. 

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With Biographical and Critical Notices. 

One volume, Svo., cloth, 225, pages, $1.50. 

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a cluster of poets. 

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Cloth. Illustrated. Nearly 400 pp. $1.50. 

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CELEBRATED SONGS OF SCOTLAND. 

Edited by JOHN D. ROSS. 

From King James V. to Henry Scott Riddell. With Memoirs 
and Notes. One vol., 8vo, 400 pages, cloth, gilt top, $2.00. 
^g^This book is a great bargain. Order at once, as the 
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ALL ABOUT BURNS. 

Compiled by JOHN D. ROSS. LL. D. 
Nearly 300 pages. Illustrations. Cloth, 75 cts., Paper 50 cts. 

RANDOM SKETCHES ON SCOTTISH 
SUBJECTS. 

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Contains : Lady Nairne and her Songs, The Poet Fergusson, 

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POMPEII— THE CITY OF DOOM. 

By BENJAMIN F. LEGGETT, Ph. D. 
Paper cover, 25 cents. 

A SHEAF OF SONG. 

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12 mo., 154 pages, cloth, 50 Cents. 

SAINT ANDREW. 

THE DISCIPLE; THE MISSIONARY; THE 
PATRON SAINT. 

By PETER ROSS, Author of "Scotland and the Scots," etc. 
Cloth, price $1.00. 



THE LAST SCOTS PARLIAMENT. 
A SKETCH OF THE PAST. 

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THE BURNS SCRAP BOOK. 

Compiled By JOHN D. ROSS. 

Full of choice Reading, Information, Anecdotes, Poems, etc., 

about Robert Burns, his home, friends, country 

and works. One volume, 256 pages, 

Cloth, $1.00. 

HOW I MADE MONEY AT HOME. 

With the Incubator, Bees, Silkworms, Canaries, Chickens and 
One Cow. 

By JOHN'S WIFE. 

82 pp., illustrated. Price, 18 cents. 



FROM DAWN TO DUSK. 

By HUNTER MacCULLOCH. 

16 mo., cloth, 134 pp. with Portrait. Contents: From dawn 

to Dusk ; Soliliquies ; To My Wife ; Miscellaneous ; 

Epigrams ; Songs ; Idyls of the Queen. 75 cts. 

BESIDE THE NARRAGUAGUS AND 
OTHER POEMS. 

By the Rev. ARTHUR JOHN LOCKHART, 
112 pp., cloth, $1.00. 

SCOTLAND AND THE SCOTS. 

By PETER ROSS. 

Author of "A Life of Saint Andrew," etc., etc. 

Cloth, 245 pp. Price, 1 1. 00. 



THE BOOK OF SCOTIA LODGE. 

By PETER ROSS. 

Being the History of Scotia Lodge, No. 634, F. & A. M., New 

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a few copies left. 

THE NEW YEAR COMES, MY LADY, 
WITH OTHER POEMS. 

By CHAS. H. COLLINS. 114 pp. Cloth, $1. 00. 

AN IDYLL OF LAKE GEORGE, AND 
OTHER POEMS. 

By BENJAMIN F. LEGGETT, Ph. D. 

Author of "A Tramp Through Switzerland," " A Sheaf of 

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One volume, i2ino., Cloth, Price 75 cents. 

ROBERT BURNS. 

AN ODE ON THE CENTENARY OF HIS 

DEATH. 1 796-1896. 

By HUNTER MacCULLOCH. 

32 pp. Illustrated. 8vo., Flexible cloth. Price 20 cents. 
" Of the poems which the occasion has already produced, 
none can well be more enthusiastic or elaborate than this ode." 

— London Spectator. 
"His flight is steady and sustained, never decending in 
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BURNS' CLARINDA, 

A COLLECTION OF ARTICLES CONCERNING 
BURNS' EDINBURGH HEROINE. 

Compiled by JOHN D. ROSS, LL. D. 

Cloth, $1.50. 










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